Halfassing the parry to "appeal to everyone" makes so that shit ends up appealing to no one.
I think that's the problem with the whole game, there isn't really any mechanic that "forces" you to act in any particular way. In Doom eternal, there was at least 3 ways to kill almost any enemy, but it had to be fast and doing anything was better than the enemy staying alive. However in TDA, outside of machine gunners, there isn't really any reason to priorotize any enemy; Agadon hunters, lizards, and barons all have ignorable long distance attacks and can't really force you into melee if you don't want to engage. All other enemies are equally lukewarm in their threat. If you feel choked too hard, running around the arena and throwing your shield at soilders is equally as valid of a response as "standing and fighting".
The difficulty in general feels like an absolute mess. Hugo's philosophy seemed to be that nightmare should be 'decently challenging', all other difficulties lead up to nightmare, but the real challenge is in the sliders; which is nuts and lead to most people playing UV and below confused as to the inclusion of certain mechanics. Like the second wind video:
https://youtu.be/LR2vQO_BHC0?si=yW8GOnFhGLDHwrNp where the guy played on hurt me plenty leading to just a bunch of wrong statements about the game. For instance he claims that the rows of pre-heated sheild guys exist soley for the spectacle of blowing them up, Hugo jangling keys in front of your face; when it becomes clear on higher difficulties (playing with sliders honestly) that they act as volotile health kits, and the only consistent way to get armor back irregardless of your loadout (besides pickups i guess). Which I think is a cool series of mechanics: having rows of shield people block heavy demons, or having fully lit up shield guys behind imps and hellknights so that you can't just throw your shield to get easy armor back, honestly just a lot of setups to fuck with the players shield throw when they probably want health back.
BUT THE AVERAGE PLAYER NEVER FUCKING FELT THAT BECAUSE OF HOW PAINFULLY FORGIVING THIS GAME IS. "Finding the challenge" in TDA is like pulling fucking teeth, and the worst of the worst is the fucking "speed up" slider, which feels about as satisfying as using 'rewind' on an emulator. This fear of making casual players try too hard is like a tumor that spreads through every single aspect of the game; and is likely the reason the game hasn't and won't get a cult community like eternal. There isn't anything to really try for.
Nightmare SHOULD be the worst of the worst. Instead its basically a tutorial for the sliders. The preset difficulty is way too easy, for instance the damage to player on nightmare is 250%. After playing on 500% for so long, 250% is basically permanent god mode, if you have even a vague idea of how the game works you MIGHT die once per level. It should be changed to at least 350 if not 400. Resource values should be dropped across the board. They want every gun to be good, fine. They want the game to function like classic doom, fine. Every weapon is pretty viable for everything outside of slaugther in og doom; the only reason you switch weapons is to maximize your resource economy. As such, Ammo and Health resource sliders should be seperate, and the base Nightmare gained ammo value should be on the far end of generous, not second to lowest like it is now. The fact that the base Nightmare resource values are only second to lowest is mind boggling, what the fuck are you spending health and ammo on at 50%? 70% ? 100% ?
The ammount of ammo you gain back on the lowest resource value should be the standard across the board (impaler should just get empowered shots, no ammo back). There is literally nothing holding back this game being more challenging, fun, and engaging like the overinflated ammount of ammunition you get back.
Second immediate change to make the game better is changing the parry system. Halfing the parry window across all difficulties, make parriable attacks rarer, make failing to execute a parry do much more damage. Like these are "hell surge" attacks, make some in lore justification for why they can be parried instead of absorbed by the shield is because they are "too powerful and reflect back" or some shit. Enemies that only punch and have pariable melee like Hell Kights, Agadon Hunters, and Barons should all have combos or base attacks were their hits aren't parriable. Force you to pay attention to what they're doing. Like maybe after you stun them they gear up to make an attack while that circle is over their heads, if you dont hit them with a melee strike in that time-frame, their next attack can't be parried.
You shouldn't be able to parry the mancubus at close range, I swear this only exists to further empower the SSG, but its dogshit and you shouldn't be apporaching them period. Their area of denial attack is pretty deadly, and walking a little closer to them shuts them down completely. They stop shooting their annoying attack, they enter an animation to lift their arms, and do a close range attack that has literally never damaged anyone (fire arms or slam attack). While they are at it, they should make the green fart gas on the floor that damages you (from the mancubus and vagary demon) red fire on the ground so you can see were it is, and the area being denied should be much bigger. It would be like the mancubus launching molotov's at you
.
Also make the health gained on Nightmare the standard across the board (idk if it is or not) and have health gained on Nightmare nerfed by like 75%. Also have the ships that you chase in the dragon levels fire back at you every once in a while to try to throw you off (you would have to quickly enter aiming mode, dodge, then leave and sprint again to try and catch up)
Inshallah! if they implement my ingenious designs TDA will literally be incalculably better and its reception 10 times more positive; as it stands, most people play UV, get bored and assume it has something to do with "parryslop" o algo. Thank you for reading my manifesto.
