Dreamcatcher Apparatus

That wouldn't be a terrible idea. Something I've considered doing myself is plugging in a controller and playing my maps that way, and using that experience to balance HNTR around. The "pot luck" nature of DBPs is really part of their charm but a downside is definitely that everyone has a different idea of what difficulty means. A more formalized map team would probably have someone in charge of balance sweeping over encounters and adjusting them accordingly.

What, you don't have faith in the upcoming Great HNTR Campaign of 2022? It would need a rebranding though. Instead "Hey, not too rough." it can be something like:

"Hey, I'm self aware.", or "Pro gamers choose this", or "Vigilante approved.", or better yet, rename HNTR to "Super Ultra Violence" and then the normies will all flock to Skill 2.

Why are you guys acting like implementing HNTR is some revolutionary idea? I spend lots of extra time implementing/balancing difficulties but I think I'm just gonna stop doing that in future DBPs since people clearly don't ever use those options.

Implementing them isn't revolutionary, but players playing on them is, which was part of why I jokingly talked about rebranding HNTR, and maybe standardizing it per a particular project series like DBP, if that series has goals for an ideal HNTR experience.  The other half of my "grievance", which lays some of the foundation for the former to happen in the first place, is that sometimes it's not worth risking a HNTR playthrough because in most cases it's better to just play on UV with saves if you don't know what you're getting into, at least for me (or worst case, HNTR is implemented as a buggy afterthought).  I've booted up some recent wads on HNTR hoping to turn off my brain and go for a light stroll or braindead romp, but still end up dying to many of the same traps that I would've died on UV anyways.  Though, it's kinda tricky, because afterwards I sometimes check to see how much harder the higher difficulty is, and sometimes there is indeed a "varied enough" spectrum from HNTR to UV that did have some thought put into it, and it may be a scoped range that that author was indeed targeting and was successful in doing so.  And also, let's say you have a whole gameplay subgenre, like a slaughtermap - for its HNTR implementation, is it even appropriate to try forcing "classic, incidental gameplay" into that same map framework and risk turning it into a "crappy normal map", or do you keep it's gameplay essence and have an "easy slaughter-map" by slaughtermap standards, one that non-slaughter brained people are going to dislike regardless of how many megaspheres you shove in there...


I just replayed DBP47 Map19 on HNTR, and thought even on UV it was well balanced (I'm a sloppy player but well broken-in after 8 years).  But yah, wow, it's a different beast.  It's still slaughter-lite on HNTR, but it's got a third of the monsters and some critical viles removed... Drastically more smooth by multiple orders of magnitudes.



In the next DBP that fancies me, I might go turbo-Noisy-9000 on UV but make HMP and HNTR super-light, and cackle sadistically in delight when people struggle with it on UV.

Name DBP where all maps had HTNR implemented, and the reduction of difficulty from UV is substantial. Don't shift the blame on players, if anyone feels frustrated by DBP map's difficulty, it is the author of the map to blame and no one else.

And nobody cares if your absurd contribution to DBP had HTNR implemented unless ALL maps in that DBP do, and it is stated so in release readme file.

You see, DBP has long had a policy where implementation of skill settings is not mandatory, is the thing done last (if at all), and the text file accompanying release states that difficulty levels are not implemented or not consistenly so, the former usually.

Nobody wants to be frustrated, what the hell is wrong with you? My experience (including with many DBPs) shows the opposite of what you are saying: I loose the steam playtesting wads once I encounter tough submission or map, and shortly thereafter abandon doing any more testing for that wad altogether. Just see my feedback train to Irkalla, Anomaly Report, Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be etc. So, your speculative opinion vs my experience.

Given that DBP has reachability as its goal, it shall enforce this philosophy strictly. If you want to make a challenge map, contribute it to challenge set, so that people who have a job and responsibilities could avoid playing entire set altogether.

OK, here's the bugfixed version: RC2

Idk what it is about this wad but I fell in love. It's never too much or too little, very comfy 10/10

Oh thanks bro! I'm not quite sure you understand though, I didn't just enjoy it; I LOVE this wad

rudi Its awesome that youre enjoying this so much! It makes all the work worth it.

Thanks for playing!
Here are the ways to get these secrets if you were interested:

Cool, thanks for playing and glad you liked it. IIRC, you have to scale the mountainside to get the secret soulsphere in MAP07 (then there's an area you have to shoot to open the door to the BFG).