DOOM 2016 Encounter Design

Overview

For half a semester I challenged myself to understand and create a well-rounded single-player combat encounter design through DOOM 2016’s snap-map level editor. My primary goal was to create unique and well-paced combat encounters using a level editor I wasn’t entirely familiar with. Additionally, I wanted to make a series of three levels to give players who are unfamiliar with the DOOM franchise to give them a summary of what DOOM is like in the three levels. I chose to do that by doing a solo project of three levels that increased in difficulty reasonably for the average player familiar with first-person shooters. I spent around seven and a half weeks working on this project and was able to test the levels with different peers at my Institute.

Each level is themed and paced with a slight underlying narrative taking place via voice lines and environmental storytelling. The main focus of the project was balancing combat encounters and having the three levels progress in difficulty and complexity over time without losing engagement. I balanced my encounters and kept track of engagement via a chart I created giving each enemy or demon that was available in DOOM 2016 a numerical rating similar to D&D’s challenge rating system. I used that table to create a series of encounters that scaled appropriately with the maximum and minimum difficulty I set for each of the levels. I placed constraints on myself limiting the player to only two weapons that the player could have throughout the levels (typically in DOOM you have several weapons at once). The other major constraint I placed on myself was removing the random resource drops from glory kills in the editor to have greater control over the player’s resources to practice design intention when placing pickups.

Planning

You can find my DOOM 2016 levels in the Snap-Map Editor under:
#encounter_mitch

Balancing for Engagement and Difficulty

To be able to quantify the level of intensity of encounters in my levels I set up a difficulty rating system for the enemies I had access to in the DOOM Snap-map editor. Since iD Software didn’t make difficulty ratings for their enemies publicly available, I came up with the difficulty rating for each enemy by fighting each of the enemies in isolation. I fought each enemy with the weakest weapon and with no additional resources (i.e. no extra ammo, armor, or health) to gauge the difficulty of each enemy type available in the editor. In the beginning, I had a linear progression going from 1 to 10 that a single type of enemy would create. After creating some encounters with that linear system I realized that an exponential progression was better suited as difficulty can tend to ramp rapidly.

Another way that I determined these numbers was by seeing if a certain amount of a lower-difficulty enemy type created the same amount of engagement in gameplay as a single higher-difficulty enemy type. For example, in my current system, an encounter with 40 possessed workers would equate to an encounter where you are fighting a Baron of Hell. In testing, I found that both the encounter of 40 workers and 1 Baron of Hell encounters used the same amount of resources when using the weakest weapon available in the Snap-map editor(EMG Mark V Pistol) with only its base 50 shots. Both encounters used up all 50 normal shots, and when using 50 charged shots it is possible to clear an encounter with 40 workers or a single Baron of Hell. Via this hands-on testing, I was able to create a system to allowed me to roughly quantify the degree of difficulty of each individual so that I would be able to design encounters while keeping the current game systems in mind.

Level Pacing Breakdown

Planning out the pacing was extremely efficient because the system allowed me to have a numerical rating for each encounter enabling me to plug it into a graph. This system directly showed the peaks and valleys of difficulty which in DOOM also is closely tied to player engagement. The larger and higher the intensity of the encounter the more buy-in from players which I believe is especially true in the DOOM franchise since it aligns with the “Rip and Tear” power fantasy. Keeping that in mind I used the difficulty ratings to intentionally design and plan each section to be a certain level of difficulty so that I could control the overall pacing between levels.

Level 1 was designed to ease players into the DOOM experience. Introduce them to the world of DOOM via voice lines subtle environmental storytelling and the lower-difficulty enemies. The max difficulty rating of encounters in this level is 10. I wanted level 1 to ease the player into DOOM’s gameplay without punishment. I was able to plan out a slow start to increase then lower the intensity and then end the level with a Revenant which is a difficulty rating of 10. The player starts looking at the pistol and grabs it to fight a variety of possessed workers (DR 0.5), Imps (DR 1), and Possessed Soldiers(DR 2). As you can see in the graph, I make a variety of encounters and I mix these enemies to create higher difficulty encounters throughout the level to help the player get used to DOOM’s gameplay.

Level 2 was designated to be the ramp-up level. This level starts with two back-to-back encounters that equate to a difficulty rating of 8 total. Whereas the end of level 1 ends with a difficulty rating 10 encounter. I wanted the level to start strong to recapture player engagement by creating an encounter at the beginning that would force the player to focus. The rest of the level is a steady ramp-up of unique encounter set ups with enemies the player hasn’t seen before. I wanted level 2 to have a solid progression of difficulty that allowed for me to start level 3 with some room to increase difficulty without making it impossible. Additionally, the level difficulty increases via variation of enemies as certain enemy types are seen in this level for the first time. To new players, depending on skill, would add another layer of engagement and difficulty as they try to figure out how to play around the newer enemies.

As seen in the end of level 3, it ends in an intense encounter in relation to the rest of the previous levels and even within the same level. I wanted the final level to have an engagement/difficulty ramp-up that could be felt within the systems and the various newly introduced higher-difficulty enemies. There are dips in tensions between encounters within rooms to offset the constant ramp-up but my intention with this last level was to be as engaging and intense as possible since narratively the player is also getting closer to their goal. Assaulting Hell. I wanted that to be reflected by the system by increasing the number of enemies and challenges as demonic forces are trying their best to keep you from reaching the Hell portal.

Overall, the goal of these three levels was to demonstrate my ability to implement proper pacing across multiple levels. I chose to develop a difficulty rating system to measure the engagement and challenge of encounters quantitatively. Additionally, I aimed to track the progression of intensity through a graph to see if my encounters matched what I planned them to be. Based on the playtests I conducted and the feedback I received, it appears that this graph mostly reflected players' experiences during gameplay.

Furthermore, I aimed to provide players with a well-rounded experience of DOOM across these levels. The first level was designed to introduce players to the pace of combat, while the second level introduced new enemies and weapons. Finally, the third level was intended to challenge players' ability to utilize the available tools against increasingly difficult foes and a large number of enemies they were already familiar with.

Translating Systematic Progression to Engaging Encounters

Numbers aside how do you make thoughtfully planned encounters using a system to reflect difficulty and engagement but make players engaged with your content? My solution to this question was by a variety of tools including varying enemy types, unique encounter set-ups, purposefully changing the rhythm of encounters, environmental storytelling, and audio.

First, the encounters needed structure. In the first encounter of the 3 levels, the player encounters a hallway with 3 possessed scientists that can be seen as their normal selves in a hologram. It starts as a gentle start to the chaos with 3 easily dispatchable enemies with a bit of environmental storytelling. The 3 possessed scientists are found simply roaming around the hallway without any extra flair at the start of this encounter. That way I can start the player off at a lower level of engagement but still draw them in with enemies to easily kill to increase the player’s confidence with the mechanics.

In the next encounter, I force the player to go into a hallway to the side to retrieve a blue keycard. Once the player grabs the keycard I introduce the player to a new enemy type, imps. The enemies themselves are new to the player and the way the encounter starts is different with the enemies spawning in after the player uses an interactable. All of this is done to ensure that the player is able to experience the new enemy type in isolation and to keep them engaged by changing up how enemies are encountered.

I used various methods within my levels to make the levels match the engagement that I projected them to have. Breaking the rhythm of the level at key points, introducing new weapons, and utilizing music and environment. In my final level, I also added player agency. In the second room, players can choose to go right or left. Whichever way they choose will change what weapon gets upgraded, their shotgun or assault rifle. I figured that a solid way to help player engagement was by giving them the chance to choose which way they wanted to go and be rewarded (regardless of which path) with a weapon enhancement they would get to use soon in a large encounter.

Additionally, within the rhythm of the levels, there needs to be contrast in the beats of each encounter. One of my favorite, introductions and pace breaks/rhythm changes is the introduction of the pinky in level 2. The reason I like it so much is because within level 1 and the earlier part of level 2 the method of enemy introduction had roughly been: enter a room, see enemy/see enemy spawn, music starts, fight. The first parts of the levels work fine and persist onward but just like in music, a constant changing rhythm bores us. So instead I changed the rhythm by uniquely introducing the pinky.

The player enters the room, there is no music, only themself and the room. The doors are locked, the room goes red, fills with red mist, and the music starts. Then suddenly, a pinky charges through the red mist. The encounter itself is not difficult, systems-wise for a player to make it through, but the set-up for the duel with the pinky helps players become more invested than before because the rhythm of the level has drastically changed uniquely.

When creating encounters I prioritize the player experience over anything else. Despite creating a system to help plan for encounters it didn’t account for the excitement and flair players expect in their levels that points on a graph can’t convey.

Ending Notes

Learning Outcomes

I realized through testing that the final encounter of the last level lacked interest initially, with testers feeling it was a letdown compared to previous encounters. Due to limitations in the Snap-Map editor, I couldn't access in-game bosses, restricting my ability to create diverse challenges. However, inspired by tester feedback, I devised an encounter where players utilize DOOM 2016’s resource glory kill drop system, with the Beserk powerup to show the player that they can get resources from glory kills where they couldn’t before. This re-engaged testers, alleviating tension and giving them a moment to feel powerful before the final fight.

Developing a difficulty rating system enabled me to create encounters more efficiently within the editor's constraints. This system quantified each encounter's intensity relative to others, helping to maintain consistent pacing and deliberate difficulty progression. Testers, particularly those of average skill, mirrored the Engagement/Difficulty graph's peaks and valleys throughout levels. While higher-skilled players approached encounters differently in early levels, their engagement matched the engagement/difficulty graph on the final, most challenging level. Watching player engagement align with the peaks and valleys of the graphs was extremely satisfying, as it illustrated a direct correlation between gameplay and encounter intensity.

Complications/Issues

In this project, a complication that I had was in my self-imposed constraints. I turned off glory kill resource dropping for all but one of my encounters. DOOM 2016’s campaign and Snap-map editor were built around the idea of getting health, armor, and occasionally ammo from glory-killing enemies. In my levels, I turned off that feature so I could have more control over what the player’s health, ammo, and armor would be throughout. But in doing so I ran into issues where the experience didn’t play like DOOM 2016 and some testers made comments that it felt like other DOOM games like 1 through 3. This wasn’t inherently a problem but it made it where I had to have ample pickups to support a variety of player skills to make levels lower-skilled players could get through.

Additionally, the editor was built with the damage numbers of weapons to be balanced towards multiplayer so some of the weapons weren’t representative of what DOOM 2016’s damage numbers would be. Despite that, I worked with the systems that I was given and did my best to make interesting encounters that players would enjoy. I learned how to work with a system under constraints and still be able to make an experience that reflected the DOOM franchise, with well-paced and unique encounters.