About a year or two ago I started exclusively pistol starting Doom levels and it makes a huge difference, especially with community wads better suited to that play style. It makes every weapon pickup a lot more valuable and forces players to familiarize themselves with high-damage weapons other than the super shotgun like the rocket launcher and berserk pack. I found it's even forced me to consider the chaingun as that game's sniper rifle, as the first shot of every burst is perfectly accurate. The only weapons in Doom's arsenal that come out seeming useless are the pistol and chainsaw. The hardest weapon to master is probably the BFG, since you have to familiarize yourself with how the invisible tracers work to pull off feats like killing a cyberdemon in two hits. Not a necessity in vanilla Doom but as the skill ceiling gets higher and higher with community wads, this in-depth knowledge of mechanics becomes way more important. Which goes to show that level design and context are as important as the design of the weapons themselves.
yea, i do pistol start sometimes, so that i can practice individual level speedruns esp for levels that have more difficult tech. ive played plenty of community wads but i prefer stuff more in the style of the original two doom games. i find that when speedrunning, the rocket launcher is used mostly for boosting or quick kills when you dont have a plasma rifle, but when playing casually, i find that i force myself to use the rocket launcher in doom 2 just to have a chance to use it or when the super shotgun runs low. a great fan wad could make the rocket launcher an essential part of the experience. maybe ill try my hand at making one some day
Level design is insanely underrated in the role it plays in how combat feels. Part of HL1's HECU fights being so good is how much scope the AI has in verticality & routes of assault & escape, only Halo Combat Evolved & FEAR have felt as satisfying to me in how its AI can navigate their environment, and actually seem like they're trying to preserve their own lives while trying to kill you, and it's partly for the exact same reasons of level design.
I recently played the Turok 2 remaster, or as i called it: a reason to scream YES at the title. Turok 2 has a huge arsenal. And i remember that as kids me and my friends would have been "oh cool, so many weapons" but adult me see the detriment. You start with the bow, and almost immediately, you get the Tek-Bow and for the rest of the game, you have to mousewheel-scroll through that thing and there's never a reason to use it as the Tek-Bow can use normal arrows. Smilar things happen with the big claw that is just better than the small claws and the whatever-its-called that uses shotgun ammo and just does better shotgun. And don't get me started on the stupid tranq-rifle. Within an arsenal, there are upgrades and sidegrades. * Upgrades replace an existing weapon. Example: Dooms chaingun has the same accuracity and damage/bullet as the pistol. It just fires faster. There is no longer a need to use the pistol. It could just as well replace the pistol. * Sidegrades add a new usecase. Example: Dooms BFG uses the same ammo as the plasmarifle, but it's not always superior, it's the situation that makes one or the other the better choice. There's this quote "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away", which i see as my guiding star to weapon design on my little shooter project (which uses the arsenal). I want every weapon to be meaningful, which then acts as a filter that prevents arsenal-clutter or having to use the 0 button to select a weapon while 2,3 and 5 are occupied by weapons that have been succeeded by upgrades and 1 is useless crap.
The rocket launcher isn't the best example IMO because it has splash damage making it a more apt weapon for crowd control while providing a notably higher DPS and at long distances at that. Further, when comparing the plasma rifle vs. the SSG, you have higher DPS but slower projectile vs. instant hitscan but the need to close distance. Within the context of only playing the original Doom 2 maps what you say is more true though. But to be honest, Doom 2 and more so Plutonia are proofs of concept for what Doom matured into: custom map sets. The only weapons that lose importance when you have all weapons and ammo are the unberserked fist, chainsaw, pistol, and the regular shotgun. (Pistol starting reduces this gap.) Otherwise, every weapon still retains distinct niches. In fact I consider Doom 2's weapon set a masterclass in balance and I'm certainly not alone in that assessment.
the rocket launcher was meant as an anecdotal example to illustrate the broader point about how in-game context is more important than the theoretical balance a weapon set has. doom 2 is certainly a masterclass in balance of weapons, but it's not a masterclass in balance of environmental or enemy design that contextualizes those weapons in a way where each weapon feels necessary to the set. custom maps and wads can make up that difference, but designers of new games ought to think more about niche use options. like how in HL1, the pistol can be used to set off tripmines or deal with headcrabs/barnacles,making it still come into play far later into the game than it ever did in the doom games. this is why HL1 is still my fave weapon set, because of how many weapons continue to matter as the game progresses.
@@MalmroseProjects Doom 2 is a fair map set at best and I agree they don't display the game's mechanics to its full potential. Given the luxury of time and endless custom content, the genius in both its weapons and bestiary, and Doom 2's lacking maps, are much more apparent. Its longevity and popularity are a testament to that. (I don't think it's even humanly possible to keep up with and play through the maps that are getting released, nonetheless past releases.) The majority of custom WADs leave the gameplay mechanics themselves untouched. Entire genres of mapping have emerged while remaining essentially the same under the hood, that's how robust it is. Anyway, I enjoyed your video and found it thought provoking, I just have to stan Doom 2('s mechanics).
There were many examples you showed where you said you'd always use the super shotgun but IMO in those cases I'd have rather used the rocket launcher. The SS makes you have to get in super close to dangerous enemies which is not necessarily what you want when you get just lob a few missiles. I kind of see the arguments you're trying to make but I just think these are kind of peripheral reasons for why Halo/etc stopped doing this.
Yeah. This is a bit silly, honestly. What makes arsenals enjoyable is player choice. Just because certain players choose to only use a "short" of the arsenal does not mean that the aresenal itself is broke. All of Doom's weapons are incredibly useful depending on which context is at play.
Its interesting that you bring up Doom 2016, because ID also came to find that 2016's weapons were too versatile for their own good, particularly the Super Shotgun, and made weapon switching a key focus in Doom Eternal. The ways they implemented this were undoubtedly pretty heavy handed, i love it personally but a lot of boomer shooter fans really dislike it. If you ever played Doom Eternal, id be very interested to hear your thoughts on this!
I disagree with your stance on the SSG from Doom 2. It is a universal use case weapon but only at close range. At long range, rocket launcher, chaingun or normal shotgun are much more useful. It’s hardly something you could use all the time and get away with unless you’re playing a really close quarters map like The Focus for example.
i hear what you mean but in the case of doom 2, there are rarely instances where you can't quickly close the gap. most levels in doom 2 are close quarters in the first half and in the second half the amount of enemies you have to crowd control goes down and the level design just doesnt prioritize long-range combat, with the most obvious exception being icon of sin. the main reason to switch out of using the ssg in doom 2 is to fight bosses or fend off crowds occasionally, but the ssg is almost always a *good* option even when it's not always *best* which is what i was getting at
If it counts i think modern day doom wads use niche weapons in a great way. Unfortunately i haven't played many but sunlust is one ive finally finished and each level has great uses of out of the box thinking. Using a rocket launcher to make a pathway through hords of imps for example. A game im a wee bit more knowledgeable is ultrakill. Thing is that game is weird. The loadout is only 5 weapons, but those weapons are designed for many uses and the goal of the game is to use the most niche and creative ways to kill things for style. Im not sure if it counts and it more like a dmc combo rather than the hl2 gravity gun but i feel like mentioning it. For example is using the rocket launcher as a movement tool for via riding the rocket, or using the red alt fire to spray oil on enemies, light them on fire with an explosion and then do a different high damage attack as enemies on fire/covered in oil take extra damage. i could do a specific railcoin (using the coin alt fire for the revolver, then shooting the coin with railcannon) and boom huge amounts of damage done in a creative way. None of this is necessary to beat the game but you get rewarded with style points. And its a good thing to note that brutal difficulty came out, and made the game much much harder, thereby requiring you to engage with other mechanics to stay alive
Hard disagree. I loved and still love having a large selection of weapons to choose from. Blood is a fantastic example. I dont think that a limited amount of weapons you can hold is a problem, but theres room for both an arcadey solution and a more realistic solution. It really depends what the game is. But if you made a mod for Doom 2 that only allowed you to hold two or three weapons at a time, that wouldn't improve the game.
i agree with the last point, but my point wasnt that realism is better. my point was that developers often make large numbers of weapons redundant or dont accommodate them with how they approach the design of the levels and encounters, etc. games just increasingly made the weirder or more niche weapons redundant or unusable which is ultimately what i want to see resolved in newer games pulling inspiration from 90s shooters
@@MalmroseProjects That's a mater of subjective opinion and playstyle. Your entire perspective on the SSG falls apart the moment you introduce players into the discussion that *don't play like you do*.
ULTRAKILL does very well with several issues raised in this video, but I don't get the impression it's quite what you're looking for. Its style system, assuming the player is interested in engaging with it, effectively mandates constant weapon switching. Each weapon has several variants, and each variant has a seperate freshness meter that diminishes as damage is dealt. That freshness meter is a multiplier on style, so if you haven't used a weapon in "a while" (by ULTRAKILL's standards lol) it gives lots of style, but if you've been using it lots it gives no style at all. This means that all weapons are designed to be universal-use weapons, but they're also kind of niche-use weapons at the same time. Each one has very prominently different functions, even between variants of the same weapon, and these functions can at best open up a staggering number of options. Perhaps the best example is the green revolver variant, which has a throwable coin that is shockingly versatile. But the reason I say they're partially niche-use weapons is that these functions, and the weapon bases generally, have defined roles. The revolver is the closest equivalent to a sniper and is great for long range precision; the shotgun is largely useful as you'd expect a shotgun to be, but there's a feature of it that makes it a lot more useful at longer ranges; the nailgun does great damage but is so unwieldy as to only make much sense against rather strong enemies. The game has to balance these niche use cases with the fact that the player has to swap weapons regularly, meaning that their roles aren't terribly strictly enforced. This is done both through making the weapons themselves more versatile, but also through the great maneuverability of the player character making it very feasible to alter the scenario itself to better suit the available weapons. If you need to use the shotgun against an enemy resistant to its long-ranged function, you can simply close that gap to ensure its efficacy. In this sense they _are_ niche-use, but they expect the player to be able to massage situations to permit that niche to be used. But that necessarily means the niches aren't generally that strict. There are a ton of very niche mechanics even still, but... yeah, they tend to be individual little factors of guns as opposed to the gun's fundamental role. I think its weapons are brilliantly designed and relatively unique, but ultimately it's an incredibly tight arsenal that doesn't really have enough leeway for the sillier or more 'superfluous' type of niche-use weapon you seem to be discussing in the video. Moreover it's such an intensely fast-paced game that the sniper playstyle you described as your favourite is almost completely unviable. Hence saying that I don't think it's what you're looking for... >v> still a phenomenal example though, I think!
My favorite arsenal in shooters is probably from Ratchet and Clank. If that doesnt count then I'll take Resistance 3. Highly recommend. That series would be a good companion on this topic. R1 has a weapon wheel, R2 doesn't, then R3 goes back to the wheel.😊
There's a particular philosophy found in a particular corner of the Halo community that I hope to see some dev really embrace wholeheartedly. Even Halo itself has never really gone for it after CE. If it _was_ embraced I don't think how many weapons you can carry would matter. What you call universal weapons are called _utility guns._ There should only be _one_ and it should be _awesome._ It's the Ryu. It's the thing that everything else deviates from. Maybe it's the Magnum, maybe it's a Battle Rifle, but it's a weapon that's simultaneously easy to use and hard to master. Other weapons are justified by their ability to perform a specific role well. Have a shotgun that functions as a close-range OHK you can pull out of your ass if you need it? Ok, then why do you _also_ have an Energy Sword and a Gravity Hammer that do the exact same thing? Come up with weapons that have weird but legitimately useful niches. CE's plasma rifle was a great flanking tool because it "stuns" players by slowing their movement and camera. The AR is a melee demon and perfect for figuring out where a camouflaged enemy is. The sniper is a sniper. Etc.
CE is one of the best balanced weapon sets in a shooter for sure, i like that approach, tho i prefer having more than 1 gun that serves as a staple for any given situation. like 2-3 i think works well, but having each one play differently is important imo
@@MalmroseProjects Yeah I know it's a pretty niche idea... IDK why I'm so into it. I was the same way with Shootmania (by the Trackmania devs) that had a grand total of three "guns". Just infinity user-made maps, a crazy competitive focus just like TM and a bunch of cool movement nonsense.
I was really disappointed by DUSK's arsenal too. I feel like Half-Life 2 got it right by just not pretending that guns are different because the particles they shoot are different. They kinda did that with the AR2 but I guess the low ammo count does serve some function, even if it is just a better SMG. Trying to make a new gun for an FPS is like trying to break the holy trinity in RPGs. You can make weird and funky stuff that is genuinely fun but if you're not the gravity gun you're not breaking any new ground.
DUSK's weapons serve their purpoes. The rest of your post? No. Just no. There are plenty of ways to "break new ground" and be creative, but raw creativity is no substitute for things that are fun to shoot. Shotguns are so unviersal because BOOM-CLICK-CLICK tickles the brain of most players. Having a spread of pellets is useful for crowd control. Having a machine gun also gives the brain a similar tickle. You want the players to have fun. You build your game to go where the fun is. People keep trying to turn this into an exact science, but it really isn't. It's a question of overlapping contexts. (Style, tone, focus)
there's not really a single reason they happened, it was an amalgamation of several factors. controllers were one, but there was still a massively successful PC market at the time. Counter Strike had less weapons, more closely resembling the 2-weapon system of Halo than the likes of HL, and CS was primarily a PC game. the popularity of CS, a shift towards "realism" and away from arcade-like design philosophies, the increasing emphasis on military aesthetics in shooters, etc etc. i also wouldnt call the 2 weapon system "dumbed down." if anything i'd say it was smarter in a number of ways: Halo allows for multiple types of grenades and melee to all be handled independently of cycling through weapons. manually pulling out a grenade in HL2 isnt "smarter" than just mapping the grenade to a separate button a la Halo. even other goldsrc games like TFC used a grenade toggle instead of a dedicated weapon slot, showing how for a more complex pc game, the streamlining was still preferable in some instances
@@MalmroseProjects Counter-Strike has literally nothing to do with it. CS has a weapon *restriction* specifically because it was going for a tactical-shooter feel. It literally did not change the way that GoldSRC handled its weapons, just restricted the player to purchasable primary/secondary choices to create a more focused style of tactical combat. No. The reason that Bungie has given time and again for the two weapon system is the exact reason that ukyoize gave. ONE BUTTON. Boom. Done. No weapon wheels (which Turok had already done on the N64), no cycling through weapons. Just one button press. This is also why you have a dedicated melee and grenade button. It's a different loop DESIGNED AROUND THE CONTROLLER. There are not "multiple reasons." That is the reason Bungie designed that system, and the reason games like COD followed suit.
@@OpenMawProductions Good point I remember Call Of Duty 1 using a 2 Primary 1 Secondary 1 Granade System but when Call Of Duty 2 came around it switch to 2 Universal Weapons 1 Lethal Granade 1 Tacticool Granade and that more or less is how it when forward and yeah it really covinient to have just 1 Button for Switch weapons (Q for PC, X for Nintendo, Y for Sega, Triangle for Sony, Y for Microsoft) not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0
@@MalmroseProjects Good Point Different Studios found Different Reasons as to Why They Switched to the 2 Weapon System One Example would be Studios Chansing Popular Trends like How Call Of Duty 2 and foward started using 2 Weapon System so other Studios Copy that to along side Regenaring Health Bar
Not the first to point it out, but Doom Eternal made using the entire arsenal an essential aspect of combat. Doing so id made the greatest game ever made. The majority of fans absolutely hated it. They are weak.
U mean it made the balista and prescion bolt the only useful tools to the game having so many mechanics that it crashes under itself and becomes a raw dps game
@@MrVoltySquirrelThey're right, though, Id accidentally made Ballista quick-swaps so good that they're your best way of chewing through literally everything, always. Pay attention to what really good players do some time. They're definitely not using everything.
While pretty clunky, I found the weapon system from Crysis was a good balance between the two, allowing 2 main weapons (rifles, shotguns), one sidearm (pistol), one special (eg. Limited use Rocket launcher), and heavy weapons which you could equip, but not stow. It allowed both the situational flexibility of the arsenal, with the swappability & contextual variety of the loadout. So you weren't stuck with a useless bugbait option cluttering your weapon selection for the last 2 hours.
Halo is near 25 years old. Limited gun amounts is old thinking, not new school. The reason why you use the shotgun in Doom is because you’re in a 2D game where matching up the line. If you shoot and make a line, you get a hit. The shotgun is a sniper rifle.
im aware that it's old thinking, but it created a specific rift between two different types of shooters. there wasnt really a big arsenal type of game for mainstream shooters until they started coming back in the mid-2010s with the "boomer shooter" revival. Halo became the dominant model for nearly 20 years. the shotgun isn't quite a sniper rifle in doom 1, and the super shotgun absolutely isnt in doom 2. i hear what you're saying but it isnt really an argument against anything i said in the video? so i dont understand why you're bringing it up
I do agree with your point to a large extent, but I disagree on why the loadout system caught on. I think the move towards loadouts instead of arsenals came for a few reasons. 1. Console controllers don't mesh well with a game where you have to juggle between like 5 weapons 2. The push towards "realism" for two very different reasons. The obvious reason being that carrying ten guns on your person isn't realistic. The less obvious, but equally important, reason is that most modern FPS games basically have a "jack of all trades" weapon in the form of assault rifles. ARs are good up close, great at mid-range, and ok at long-range. If CoD allowed you to carry 5 guns, people would still overwhelmingly use the AR because it's so damn good, only occasionally pulling out a sniper for a difficult shot or a shotgun for a CQB section of the map.
A handful of Deep Rock Galactic's weapons feel like they take the "niche" role (to me) especially with overclocks that mean your movement has to be either slow and methodical or like being in a pinball machine
I like how this video is actually pretty balanced and not just "this thing bad this thing good" garbage. I've played an equal amount of both designs and I think they are equally as good, just different. As long as the gameplay/lore itself suits the weapons you could have 50 for all I care lol. Like I wouldn't really compare Postal 2's weapons with Battlefront 2 2005's, the gameplay is so completely different that it would be foolish to do so. Halo and Half-Life are closer, but even then the actual level design is quite different. Halo is much more open and has many more (armed) enemies so you'll almost always have a new weapon to pick up. Half-Life is more cramped but has more varieties of enemies and weapons (not more weapons, just more relatively unique). Also, it's funny that the literal super soldier in the 24th century carries less than a 27yr old scientist 😂
i dont really think the weapon limit had much to do with what makes modern shooters feel like crap to play. there are old classic games like the original CS or Goldeneye with a reduced weapon set that still play phenomenally. i'd say Halo 1 holds up super well. im sure you'll agree it's not the only problem with shooters like COD, but if you think it's a big one, then i'd ask if you think it'd be a substantial improvement to smth like COD to allow you to have all weapons accessible at once, but change nothing else about those games? it's one of those easy scapegoats i think, but i think it is misleading as to what really makes those kinds of games terrible. there's not one single answer but for me the biggest problem with modern shooters is how little agency the players have in the campaign to affect any meaningful outcome. large firefights just happen on cue and end on cue without it really feeling like the player significantly impacted the outcome beyond being a moving camera aiming at targets until the mandatory sequence has run its course. ironically i feel exactly the same way about doom 2016 which is why i cant get into that game at all.
I think titanfall 2 gets this right its still setpiece to setpiece but you have way more freedom for how you playing those setpieces and weapons you get in those setpieces keeps things fresh like mastiff and eva is both shotguns that plays different instead of just upgrades same with titans @@MalmroseProjects
i havent played much of re4 and i only played the first dead space so i cant say much, although i think specific uses can be a good thing. to me it sounds similar to the old AVP game where you have a set determined by which character you pick and each character has different utility options and attack modes. i love that approach although that game is sorta underwhelming to play these days
@@MalmroseProjectsthank god re4 isn't underwhelming, ill say the glue that holds re4s guns together as the beautiful histun system that allows all weapons and their utilities to stay relevant (with exception to the tmp just being a better pistol)
is there an audio issue? im trying to figure out how to get my new condenser mic properly mixed/mastered, it's a better mic than what i was using before but the editing process might be causing issues
@@MalmroseProjects it sounds like it has more bass than usual I think, but it's not necesserily worse. Great video btw, it's nice seeing you talk about game mechanics like that
@@MalmroseProjects The acoustics in this video sound noticeably worse compared to (at least some) previous ones. If that microphone is brand new for this and you haven't used it before, it may just be that a higher quality mic tends to make poor acoustics more noticeable than e.g. a headset mic, since those have different use cases and thus interact in distinct ways to different recording environments. Microphone positioning is also a big factor - as far as I know it's technically best practice _not_ to have it straight in front of your mouth and up close, but when there are high ambient noise levels and reverb/echo, it can be beneficial to do it that way to maximize the volume difference of those elements vs. your voice. If you've used the microphone before this video, then it may be that the software you recorded voiceover in defaulted to a laptop mic or otherwise one that is _extremely_ not ideal, since... yeah, it does sound fairly low quality. Granted, that impression of quality may be due to other factors, I can't say for certain. Another thing to look out for is if you've recorded it in a different place/room than before, that can make a significant difference in how echoey/reverb-y things end up and it's possible that it's the (a?) culprit here. Some experimentation may be warranted there, at your discretion. (unless it makes no sense that this could be a factor and it isn't reasonably possible to experiment anyway, in which case dismiss it lol) I am by no means an expert with this stuff, so I'm unable to get all too specific, but hopefully something about this helps o,o I'm also aware you record music so I don't wanna come across as condescending or anything, you may already know this stuff. I dunno though! Worth saying anyway even if it ends up redundant c: (Also the Shadow of the Colossus video was distinctly over-compressed, so this video is an improvement in that regard in my opinion! For voiceover, you don't want the waveform to be a big block - my preferences are certainly more towards the airy and uncompressed, but I think the sweet spot for most is in the middle.)
im aware of speedruns using it, but it's more for gaining speed and there's limitations bc as far as i know it's a glitch in SP. i wasnt able to get footage of it in SP bc it doesnt work the same way
@@ukyoize You know sometimes title are wrong because, they are a catchphrase that sparks an emotional response ou your end, to make you want watch the video. Also the title counterbalances itself with the kinda, so it's not like it's lying to you either, just don't take everything literraly, y'know?
About a year or two ago I started exclusively pistol starting Doom levels and it makes a huge difference, especially with community wads better suited to that play style.
It makes every weapon pickup a lot more valuable and forces players to familiarize themselves with high-damage weapons other than the super shotgun like the rocket launcher and berserk pack. I found it's even forced me to consider the chaingun as that game's sniper rifle, as the first shot of every burst is perfectly accurate.
The only weapons in Doom's arsenal that come out seeming useless are the pistol and chainsaw. The hardest weapon to master is probably the BFG, since you have to familiarize yourself with how the invisible tracers work to pull off feats like killing a cyberdemon in two hits. Not a necessity in vanilla Doom but as the skill ceiling gets higher and higher with community wads, this in-depth knowledge of mechanics becomes way more important.
Which goes to show that level design and context are as important as the design of the weapons themselves.
yea, i do pistol start sometimes, so that i can practice individual level speedruns esp for levels that have more difficult tech. ive played plenty of community wads but i prefer stuff more in the style of the original two doom games. i find that when speedrunning, the rocket launcher is used mostly for boosting or quick kills when you dont have a plasma rifle, but when playing casually, i find that i force myself to use the rocket launcher in doom 2 just to have a chance to use it or when the super shotgun runs low. a great fan wad could make the rocket launcher an essential part of the experience. maybe ill try my hand at making one some day
Level design is insanely underrated in the role it plays in how combat feels.
Part of HL1's HECU fights being so good is how much scope the AI has in verticality & routes of assault & escape, only Halo Combat Evolved & FEAR have felt as satisfying to me in how its AI can navigate their environment, and actually seem like they're trying to preserve their own lives while trying to kill you, and it's partly for the exact same reasons of level design.
I love one thing That og shooters Have a big Arsenal of weapons and every weapon is different.CoD has just the same weapons with different stats
I recently played the Turok 2 remaster, or as i called it: a reason to scream YES at the title.
Turok 2 has a huge arsenal. And i remember that as kids me and my friends would have been "oh cool, so many weapons" but adult me see the detriment.
You start with the bow, and almost immediately, you get the Tek-Bow and for the rest of the game, you have to mousewheel-scroll through that thing and there's never a reason to use it as the Tek-Bow can use normal arrows.
Smilar things happen with the big claw that is just better than the small claws and the whatever-its-called that uses shotgun ammo and just does better shotgun. And don't get me started on the stupid tranq-rifle.
Within an arsenal, there are upgrades and sidegrades.
* Upgrades replace an existing weapon. Example: Dooms chaingun has the same accuracity and damage/bullet as the pistol. It just fires faster. There is no longer a need to use the pistol. It could just as well replace the pistol.
* Sidegrades add a new usecase. Example: Dooms BFG uses the same ammo as the plasmarifle, but it's not always superior, it's the situation that makes one or the other the better choice.
There's this quote "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away", which i see as my guiding star to weapon design on my little shooter project (which uses the arsenal). I want every weapon to be meaningful, which then acts as a filter that prevents arsenal-clutter or having to use the 0 button to select a weapon while 2,3 and 5 are occupied by weapons that have been succeeded by upgrades and 1 is useless crap.
The rocket launcher isn't the best example IMO because it has splash damage making it a more apt weapon for crowd control while providing a notably higher DPS and at long distances at that. Further, when comparing the plasma rifle vs. the SSG, you have higher DPS but slower projectile vs. instant hitscan but the need to close distance.
Within the context of only playing the original Doom 2 maps what you say is more true though. But to be honest, Doom 2 and more so Plutonia are proofs of concept for what Doom matured into: custom map sets.
The only weapons that lose importance when you have all weapons and ammo are the unberserked fist, chainsaw, pistol, and the regular shotgun. (Pistol starting reduces this gap.) Otherwise, every weapon still retains distinct niches. In fact I consider Doom 2's weapon set a masterclass in balance and I'm certainly not alone in that assessment.
the rocket launcher was meant as an anecdotal example to illustrate the broader point about how in-game context is more important than the theoretical balance a weapon set has. doom 2 is certainly a masterclass in balance of weapons, but it's not a masterclass in balance of environmental or enemy design that contextualizes those weapons in a way where each weapon feels necessary to the set. custom maps and wads can make up that difference, but designers of new games ought to think more about niche use options. like how in HL1, the pistol can be used to set off tripmines or deal with headcrabs/barnacles,making it still come into play far later into the game than it ever did in the doom games. this is why HL1 is still my fave weapon set, because of how many weapons continue to matter as the game progresses.
@@MalmroseProjects Doom 2 is a fair map set at best and I agree they don't display the game's mechanics to its full potential. Given the luxury of time and endless custom content, the genius in both its weapons and bestiary, and Doom 2's lacking maps, are much more apparent. Its longevity and popularity are a testament to that. (I don't think it's even humanly possible to keep up with and play through the maps that are getting released, nonetheless past releases.)
The majority of custom WADs leave the gameplay mechanics themselves untouched. Entire genres of mapping have emerged while remaining essentially the same under the hood, that's how robust it is.
Anyway, I enjoyed your video and found it thought provoking, I just have to stan Doom 2('s mechanics).
From SMGs to RPGs I carry quite an arsenal
And skip around a warzone like a subatomic particle!
There were many examples you showed where you said you'd always use the super shotgun but IMO in those cases I'd have rather used the rocket launcher. The SS makes you have to get in super close to dangerous enemies which is not necessarily what you want when you get just lob a few missiles.
I kind of see the arguments you're trying to make but I just think these are kind of peripheral reasons for why Halo/etc stopped doing this.
Yeah. This is a bit silly, honestly.
What makes arsenals enjoyable is player choice. Just because certain players choose to only use a "short" of the arsenal does not mean that the aresenal itself is broke. All of Doom's weapons are incredibly useful depending on which context is at play.
Its interesting that you bring up Doom 2016, because ID also came to find that 2016's weapons were too versatile for their own good, particularly the Super Shotgun, and made weapon switching a key focus in Doom Eternal. The ways they implemented this were undoubtedly pretty heavy handed, i love it personally but a lot of boomer shooter fans really dislike it. If you ever played Doom Eternal, id be very interested to hear your thoughts on this!
i have it but i dont know if i can run the game on my current tech. might be a while before i can play it for real sadly
I disagree with your stance on the SSG from Doom 2. It is a universal use case weapon but only at close range. At long range, rocket launcher, chaingun or normal shotgun are much more useful. It’s hardly something you could use all the time and get away with unless you’re playing a really close quarters map like The Focus for example.
i hear what you mean but in the case of doom 2, there are rarely instances where you can't quickly close the gap. most levels in doom 2 are close quarters in the first half and in the second half the amount of enemies you have to crowd control goes down and the level design just doesnt prioritize long-range combat, with the most obvious exception being icon of sin. the main reason to switch out of using the ssg in doom 2 is to fight bosses or fend off crowds occasionally, but the ssg is almost always a *good* option even when it's not always *best* which is what i was getting at
2:30 really diggin’ this Them Bones remix 🦴 🦴 🎸
2:23 guy flies over wall
If it counts i think modern day doom wads use niche weapons in a great way. Unfortunately i haven't played many but sunlust is one ive finally finished and each level has great uses of out of the box thinking. Using a rocket launcher to make a pathway through hords of imps for example. A game im a wee bit more knowledgeable is ultrakill. Thing is that game is weird. The loadout is only 5 weapons, but those weapons are designed for many uses and the goal of the game is to use the most niche and creative ways to kill things for style. Im not sure if it counts and it more like a dmc combo rather than the hl2 gravity gun but i feel like mentioning it. For example is using the rocket launcher as a movement tool for via riding the rocket, or using the red alt fire to spray oil on enemies, light them on fire with an explosion and then do a different high damage attack as enemies on fire/covered in oil take extra damage. i could do a specific railcoin (using the coin alt fire for the revolver, then shooting the coin with railcannon) and boom huge amounts of damage done in a creative way. None of this is necessary to beat the game but you get rewarded with style points. And its a good thing to note that brutal difficulty came out, and made the game much much harder, thereby requiring you to engage with other mechanics to stay alive
Great video! Really enjoyed this exploration
Hard disagree.
I loved and still love having a large selection of weapons to choose from. Blood is a fantastic example.
I dont think that a limited amount of weapons you can hold is a problem, but theres room for both an arcadey solution and a more realistic solution. It really depends what the game is.
But if you made a mod for Doom 2 that only allowed you to hold two or three weapons at a time, that wouldn't improve the game.
i agree with the last point, but my point wasnt that realism is better. my point was that developers often make large numbers of weapons redundant or dont accommodate them with how they approach the design of the levels and encounters, etc. games just increasingly made the weirder or more niche weapons redundant or unusable which is ultimately what i want to see resolved in newer games pulling inspiration from 90s shooters
@@MalmroseProjects That's a mater of subjective opinion and playstyle. Your entire perspective on the SSG falls apart the moment you introduce players into the discussion that *don't play like you do*.
ULTRAKILL does very well with several issues raised in this video, but I don't get the impression it's quite what you're looking for. Its style system, assuming the player is interested in engaging with it, effectively mandates constant weapon switching.
Each weapon has several variants, and each variant has a seperate freshness meter that diminishes as damage is dealt. That freshness meter is a multiplier on style, so if you haven't used a weapon in "a while" (by ULTRAKILL's standards lol) it gives lots of style, but if you've been using it lots it gives no style at all.
This means that all weapons are designed to be universal-use weapons, but they're also kind of niche-use weapons at the same time. Each one has very prominently different functions, even between variants of the same weapon, and these functions can at best open up a staggering number of options. Perhaps the best example is the green revolver variant, which has a throwable coin that is shockingly versatile.
But the reason I say they're partially niche-use weapons is that these functions, and the weapon bases generally, have defined roles. The revolver is the closest equivalent to a sniper and is great for long range precision; the shotgun is largely useful as you'd expect a shotgun to be, but there's a feature of it that makes it a lot more useful at longer ranges; the nailgun does great damage but is so unwieldy as to only make much sense against rather strong enemies.
The game has to balance these niche use cases with the fact that the player has to swap weapons regularly, meaning that their roles aren't terribly strictly enforced. This is done both through making the weapons themselves more versatile, but also through the great maneuverability of the player character making it very feasible to alter the scenario itself to better suit the available weapons. If you need to use the shotgun against an enemy resistant to its long-ranged function, you can simply close that gap to ensure its efficacy. In this sense they _are_ niche-use, but they expect the player to be able to massage situations to permit that niche to be used. But that necessarily means the niches aren't generally that strict. There are a ton of very niche mechanics even still, but... yeah, they tend to be individual little factors of guns as opposed to the gun's fundamental role.
I think its weapons are brilliantly designed and relatively unique, but ultimately it's an incredibly tight arsenal that doesn't really have enough leeway for the sillier or more 'superfluous' type of niche-use weapon you seem to be discussing in the video. Moreover it's such an intensely fast-paced game that the sniper playstyle you described as your favourite is almost completely unviable. Hence saying that I don't think it's what you're looking for... >v> still a phenomenal example though, I think!
My favorite arsenal in shooters is probably from Ratchet and Clank. If that doesnt count then I'll take Resistance 3. Highly recommend.
That series would be a good companion on this topic. R1 has a weapon wheel, R2 doesn't, then R3 goes back to the wheel.😊
There's a particular philosophy found in a particular corner of the Halo community that I hope to see some dev really embrace wholeheartedly. Even Halo itself has never really gone for it after CE. If it _was_ embraced I don't think how many weapons you can carry would matter.
What you call universal weapons are called _utility guns._ There should only be _one_ and it should be _awesome._ It's the Ryu. It's the thing that everything else deviates from. Maybe it's the Magnum, maybe it's a Battle Rifle, but it's a weapon that's simultaneously easy to use and hard to master.
Other weapons are justified by their ability to perform a specific role well. Have a shotgun that functions as a close-range OHK you can pull out of your ass if you need it? Ok, then why do you _also_ have an Energy Sword and a Gravity Hammer that do the exact same thing? Come up with weapons that have weird but legitimately useful niches. CE's plasma rifle was a great flanking tool because it "stuns" players by slowing their movement and camera. The AR is a melee demon and perfect for figuring out where a camouflaged enemy is. The sniper is a sniper. Etc.
CE is one of the best balanced weapon sets in a shooter for sure, i like that approach, tho i prefer having more than 1 gun that serves as a staple for any given situation. like 2-3 i think works well, but having each one play differently is important imo
@@MalmroseProjects Yeah I know it's a pretty niche idea... IDK why I'm so into it. I was the same way with Shootmania (by the Trackmania devs) that had a grand total of three "guns". Just infinity user-made maps, a crazy competitive focus just like TM and a bunch of cool movement nonsense.
I was really disappointed by DUSK's arsenal too. I feel like Half-Life 2 got it right by just not pretending that guns are different because the particles they shoot are different. They kinda did that with the AR2 but I guess the low ammo count does serve some function, even if it is just a better SMG.
Trying to make a new gun for an FPS is like trying to break the holy trinity in RPGs. You can make weird and funky stuff that is genuinely fun but if you're not the gravity gun you're not breaking any new ground.
DUSK's weapons serve their purpoes.
The rest of your post? No. Just no. There are plenty of ways to "break new ground" and be creative, but raw creativity is no substitute for things that are fun to shoot. Shotguns are so unviersal because BOOM-CLICK-CLICK tickles the brain of most players. Having a spread of pellets is useful for crowd control. Having a machine gun also gives the brain a similar tickle.
You want the players to have fun. You build your game to go where the fun is.
People keep trying to turn this into an exact science, but it really isn't. It's a question of overlapping contexts. (Style, tone, focus)
@@OpenMawProductionsThis comment makes me want to bash my own skull in.
The real reason why 2 weapon system exist is because gamepads have small amout of buttons, so game devs had to create dumbed down system.
there's not really a single reason they happened, it was an amalgamation of several factors. controllers were one, but there was still a massively successful PC market at the time. Counter Strike had less weapons, more closely resembling the 2-weapon system of Halo than the likes of HL, and CS was primarily a PC game. the popularity of CS, a shift towards "realism" and away from arcade-like design philosophies, the increasing emphasis on military aesthetics in shooters, etc etc.
i also wouldnt call the 2 weapon system "dumbed down." if anything i'd say it was smarter in a number of ways: Halo allows for multiple types of grenades and melee to all be handled independently of cycling through weapons. manually pulling out a grenade in HL2 isnt "smarter" than just mapping the grenade to a separate button a la Halo. even other goldsrc games like TFC used a grenade toggle instead of a dedicated weapon slot, showing how for a more complex pc game, the streamlining was still preferable in some instances
@@MalmroseProjects Counter-Strike has literally nothing to do with it. CS has a weapon *restriction* specifically because it was going for a tactical-shooter feel. It literally did not change the way that GoldSRC handled its weapons, just restricted the player to purchasable primary/secondary choices to create a more focused style of tactical combat.
No. The reason that Bungie has given time and again for the two weapon system is the exact reason that ukyoize gave. ONE BUTTON. Boom. Done. No weapon wheels (which Turok had already done on the N64), no cycling through weapons. Just one button press. This is also why you have a dedicated melee and grenade button. It's a different loop DESIGNED AROUND THE CONTROLLER. There are not "multiple reasons." That is the reason Bungie designed that system, and the reason games like COD followed suit.
@@OpenMawProductions Good point
I remember Call Of Duty 1 using a 2 Primary 1 Secondary 1 Granade System but when Call Of Duty 2 came around it switch to 2 Universal Weapons 1 Lethal Granade 1 Tacticool Granade and that more or less is how it when forward and yeah it really covinient to have just 1 Button for Switch weapons (Q for PC, X for Nintendo, Y for Sega, Triangle for Sony, Y for Microsoft) not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0
@@MalmroseProjects Good Point Different Studios found Different Reasons as to Why They Switched to the 2 Weapon System
One Example would be Studios Chansing Popular Trends like How Call Of Duty 2 and foward started using 2 Weapon System so other Studios Copy that to along side Regenaring Health Bar
Not the first to point it out, but Doom Eternal made using the entire arsenal an essential aspect of combat. Doing so id made the greatest game ever made. The majority of fans absolutely hated it. They are weak.
U mean it made the balista and prescion bolt the only useful tools to the game having so many mechanics that it crashes under itself and becomes a raw dps game
In*
lol
@@MrVoltySquirrelidk what lol means in this context but doom eternal has less depth the better you get at is
@@MrVoltySquirrelThey're right, though, Id accidentally made Ballista quick-swaps so good that they're your best way of chewing through literally everything, always. Pay attention to what really good players do some time. They're definitely not using everything.
While pretty clunky, I found the weapon system from Crysis was a good balance between the two, allowing 2 main weapons (rifles, shotguns), one sidearm (pistol), one special (eg. Limited use Rocket launcher), and heavy weapons which you could equip, but not stow.
It allowed both the situational flexibility of the arsenal, with the swappability & contextual variety of the loadout. So you weren't stuck with a useless bugbait option cluttering your weapon selection for the last 2 hours.
That's still just a load out. It's just a load out with 4 "slots."
@@OpenMawProductions and an arsenal is just a 9-11 slot 'loadout' if you're gonna be like that.
Halo is near 25 years old. Limited gun amounts is old thinking, not new school.
The reason why you use the shotgun in Doom is because you’re in a 2D game where matching up the line. If you shoot and make a line, you get a hit. The shotgun is a sniper rifle.
im aware that it's old thinking, but it created a specific rift between two different types of shooters. there wasnt really a big arsenal type of game for mainstream shooters until they started coming back in the mid-2010s with the "boomer shooter" revival. Halo became the dominant model for nearly 20 years.
the shotgun isn't quite a sniper rifle in doom 1, and the super shotgun absolutely isnt in doom 2. i hear what you're saying but it isnt really an argument against anything i said in the video? so i dont understand why you're bringing it up
I do agree with your point to a large extent, but I disagree on why the loadout system caught on. I think the move towards loadouts instead of arsenals came for a few reasons.
1. Console controllers don't mesh well with a game where you have to juggle between like 5 weapons
2. The push towards "realism" for two very different reasons. The obvious reason being that carrying ten guns on your person isn't realistic. The less obvious, but equally important, reason is that most modern FPS games basically have a "jack of all trades" weapon in the form of assault rifles. ARs are good up close, great at mid-range, and ok at long-range. If CoD allowed you to carry 5 guns, people would still overwhelmingly use the AR because it's so damn good, only occasionally pulling out a sniper for a difficult shot or a shotgun for a CQB section of the map.
If you're trying to make your videos 4:3, then you got to render it in 4:3. 😺
A handful of Deep Rock Galactic's weapons feel like they take the "niche" role (to me) especially with overclocks that mean your movement has to be either slow and methodical or like being in a pinball machine
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?!
I like how this video is actually pretty balanced and not just "this thing bad this thing good" garbage. I've played an equal amount of both designs and I think they are equally as good, just different. As long as the gameplay/lore itself suits the weapons you could have 50 for all I care lol.
Like I wouldn't really compare Postal 2's weapons with Battlefront 2 2005's, the gameplay is so completely different that it would be foolish to do so. Halo and Half-Life are closer, but even then the actual level design is quite different. Halo is much more open and has many more (armed) enemies so you'll almost always have a new weapon to pick up. Half-Life is more cramped but has more varieties of enemies and weapons (not more weapons, just more relatively unique).
Also, it's funny that the literal super soldier in the 24th century carries less than a 27yr old scientist 😂
Man the entire video is played in 4:3 but you rendered/uploaded it in 16:9.
Missed opportunities? No kidding.
Modern shooters don't have enough guns. Two to three weapon limits killed FPS games until boomer shooters corrected things.
i dont really think the weapon limit had much to do with what makes modern shooters feel like crap to play. there are old classic games like the original CS or Goldeneye with a reduced weapon set that still play phenomenally. i'd say Halo 1 holds up super well. im sure you'll agree it's not the only problem with shooters like COD, but if you think it's a big one, then i'd ask if you think it'd be a substantial improvement to smth like COD to allow you to have all weapons accessible at once, but change nothing else about those games?
it's one of those easy scapegoats i think, but i think it is misleading as to what really makes those kinds of games terrible. there's not one single answer but for me the biggest problem with modern shooters is how little agency the players have in the campaign to affect any meaningful outcome. large firefights just happen on cue and end on cue without it really feeling like the player significantly impacted the outcome beyond being a moving camera aiming at targets until the mandatory sequence has run its course. ironically i feel exactly the same way about doom 2016 which is why i cant get into that game at all.
I think titanfall 2 gets this right its still setpiece to setpiece but you have way more freedom for how you playing those setpieces and weapons you get in those setpieces keeps things fresh like mastiff and eva is both shotguns that plays different instead of just upgrades same with titans @@MalmroseProjects
you didn't watch the video
Any thoughts on re4 and dead space 2s weapons? Where weapons are used more like attacks ina beat em up with specific uses
i havent played much of re4 and i only played the first dead space so i cant say much, although i think specific uses can be a good thing. to me it sounds similar to the old AVP game where you have a set determined by which character you pick and each character has different utility options and attack modes. i love that approach although that game is sorta underwhelming to play these days
@@MalmroseProjectsthank god re4 isn't underwhelming, ill say the glue that holds re4s guns together as the beautiful histun system that allows all weapons and their utilities to stay relevant (with exception to the tmp just being a better pistol)
Your voice is like a dying dove. 😮
what happened to your microphone?
is there an audio issue? im trying to figure out how to get my new condenser mic properly mixed/mastered, it's a better mic than what i was using before but the editing process might be causing issues
@@MalmroseProjects it sounds like it has more bass than usual I think, but it's not necesserily worse. Great video btw, it's nice seeing you talk about game mechanics like that
@@MalmroseProjects It also sounds like there's a tad bit of fuzz to the voice over
@@MalmroseProjects The acoustics in this video sound noticeably worse compared to (at least some) previous ones. If that microphone is brand new for this and you haven't used it before, it may just be that a higher quality mic tends to make poor acoustics more noticeable than e.g. a headset mic, since those have different use cases and thus interact in distinct ways to different recording environments. Microphone positioning is also a big factor - as far as I know it's technically best practice _not_ to have it straight in front of your mouth and up close, but when there are high ambient noise levels and reverb/echo, it can be beneficial to do it that way to maximize the volume difference of those elements vs. your voice.
If you've used the microphone before this video, then it may be that the software you recorded voiceover in defaulted to a laptop mic or otherwise one that is _extremely_ not ideal, since... yeah, it does sound fairly low quality. Granted, that impression of quality may be due to other factors, I can't say for certain.
Another thing to look out for is if you've recorded it in a different place/room than before, that can make a significant difference in how echoey/reverb-y things end up and it's possible that it's the (a?) culprit here. Some experimentation may be warranted there, at your discretion. (unless it makes no sense that this could be a factor and it isn't reasonably possible to experiment anyway, in which case dismiss it lol)
I am by no means an expert with this stuff, so I'm unable to get all too specific, but hopefully something about this helps o,o I'm also aware you record music so I don't wanna come across as condescending or anything, you may already know this stuff. I dunno though! Worth saying anyway even if it ends up redundant c:
(Also the Shadow of the Colossus video was distinctly over-compressed, so this video is an improvement in that regard in my opinion! For voiceover, you don't want the waveform to be a big block - my preferences are certainly more towards the airy and uncompressed, but I think the sweet spot for most is in the middle.)
gaussjumping is good in single player too, just watch a speedrun lol
im aware of speedruns using it, but it's more for gaining speed and there's limitations bc as far as i know it's a glitch in SP. i wasnt able to get footage of it in SP bc it doesnt work the same way
See that dislike bar - that's discomfort. Discomfort with the quality and thought behind an analysis we don't hear every day. Keep it up!
Title = wrong. Didn't/won't watch.
the title isnt really what the video is about. check the description for a more accurate summary of what i actually discuss
@@MalmroseProjects
Then change the title?
@@ukyoize You know sometimes title are wrong because, they are a catchphrase that sparks an emotional response ou your end, to make you want watch the video. Also the title counterbalances itself with the kinda, so it's not like it's lying to you either, just don't take everything literraly, y'know?
@@MalmroseProjects I appreciate your intention, have a terrific day.
thankfully modern designers are starting to realize this
I disagree.