Forum Overview :: Sigil :: I may come off as indignant in this post. I'm just really passionate about Doom.

[quote name="Dream Cast"][quote name="Dream Cast"]You can't aim up or down in Doom because, like all great 2D shooters, it's not about aiming - it's about evading. Every enemy attack in Doom can be dodged. Even the grunts, with their hitscan guns, will lock on to your position a fraction of a second before pulling the trigger; as long as you displace in time, they won't touch you.[/quote] Speak of the devil! Here's something an actual developer posted on another forum today: [quote] In almost every shooter, AI have no delay. Consider an FPS where 10 AI soldiers are shooting at you. If there's only a response delay, and you stop moving for half a second, every AI will have the time to aim perfectly and shoot at you simultaneously. Insanely frustrating. If every AI is hitting you depending on a random number, then it's a lot more fair. As soon as you're out of cover, you'll take a constant amount of damage depending on the number of enemies. You just add a little factor so that AI miss more frequently if you're moving faster, and there, you're rewarding player skill.[/quote] I think my concept of fairness, and this guy's concept of fairness, may be diametrically opposed. I had three thoughts while reading his AI delay horror story: 1. That sounds like good incentive for the player to stay mobile, and prioritize hitscanners. 2. That sounds like good incentive for the gameplay designer to include some options for avoiding damage, besides running around in circles. 3. That sounds like GREAT incentive for the level designer to not dump 10 hitscanners somewhere they can all target the player at once. What I didn't consider is how ~insanely frustrating~ the whole ordeal would be for everybody involved. It's better design to just remove the delay and replace it with a dice roll. Maybe you could give the player a +1 to his dice roll for every level he is above the enemy, to reflect how much more skilled he is? To keep things from getting too grindy, you could even allow players to level up faster by paying real money. Nothing is fairer than capitalism. <i>Except Doom.</i>[/quote]