DOOM 2016 Encounter Design
Type of Project: Solo Personal | Role: Level Designer | Size: Independent | Duration: 7 1/2 weeks | Year Created: Early 2024 | Software: DOOM 2016 Snap-Map Editor
Overview
Objective:
I challenged myself to create a well-rounded single-player combat encounter design using DOOM 2016’s SnapMap level editor.
Primary goal: Design unique and well-paced combat encounters.
Create a series of three levels to introduce new players to the DOOM franchise.
Approach:
Designed three levels, each progressively more difficult for average players familiar with first-person shooters.
I worked solo on the project for over seven and a half weeks.
Tested the levels with peers at my Institute.
Thematic & Narrative Design:
Developed each level with a specific theme and underlying narrative delivered through voice lines and environmental storytelling.
Focused on balancing combat encounters while ensuring the levels progressed in difficulty and complexity, maintaining player engagement.
Combat Balancing:
Created a chart assigning a numerical rating to each enemy or demon, inspired by D&D’s challenge rating system.
Used this chart to design encounters that scaled appropriately within the difficulty range set for each level.
Design Constraints:
Limited the player to two weapons throughout all levels, contrary to the usual multiple weapons in DOOM.
Removed random resource drops from glory kills, allowing for greater control over player resources and more intentional placement of pickups.
Planning
You can find my DOOM 2016 levels in the Snap-Map Editor under:
#encounter_mitch
Balancing for Engagement and Difficulty
Difficulty Rating System:
Created a custom difficulty rating system for the enemies in DOOM SnapMap by testing each in isolation.
Fought each enemy using the weakest weapon and no additional resources to gauge their difficulty.
Initially used a linear progression (1-10), but found that an exponential progression was better suited for difficulty scaling.
Combat Engagement Testing:
Tested if a certain quantity of lower-difficulty enemies created the same engagement as a higher-difficulty enemy.
For example, 40 possessed workers were equated to a single Baron of Hell in terms of engagement.
Hands-On Validation:
Tested with the weakest weapon (EMG Mark V Pistol) and found that both 40 workers and 1 Baron of Hell consumed the same amount of resources (50 shots).
This hands-on testing helped refine the difficulty system, ensuring balanced encounters that fit within the game's mechanics.
Level Pacing Breakdown
Efficiency of the Rating System:
The difficulty rating system allowed for efficient pacing by providing numerical ratings for each encounter, which were then plotted on a graph.
This graph clearly highlighted the peaks and valleys of difficulty, which directly correlated with player engagement in DOOM.
Engagement and Power Fantasy:
Recognized that higher-intensity encounters lead to greater player buy-in, aligning with DOOM’s “Rip and Tear” power fantasy.
Used the difficulty ratings to intentionally design and plan each section with a specific difficulty to control pacing across the levels.
Level 1:
Objective & Design:
Designed to ease players into the DOOM experience with introductory voice lines, subtle environmental storytelling, and lower-difficulty enemies.
The max difficulty rating for encounters in this level is 10.
The level starts slow, gradually increasing intensity before culminating in a Revenant encounter (DR 10) at the end.
Enemy Encounters & Progression:
Players begin with a pistol, fighting lower-difficulty enemies: Possessed Workers (DR 0.5), Imps (DR 1), and Possessed Soldiers (DR 2).
The graph illustrates how various enemy combinations were used to progressively increase difficulty, helping players adjust to the game's mechanics.
Level 2:
Objective & Design:
Level 2 serves as the ramp-up stage, beginning with two back-to-back encounters totaling a difficulty rating of 8, while the previous level concluded with a DR 10 encounter.
The level opens with a challenging encounter to recapture player engagement, forcing focus early on.
The rest of the level provides a steady increase in difficulty, introducing unique enemy encounters that the player hasn't faced before.
Difficulty Progression & Engagement:
Designed to provide a solid difficulty progression, leaving room to increase the challenge in level 3 without making it overwhelming.
The level introduces new enemy types, adding complexity and requiring players to adapt, which increases engagement for new players as they figure out how to handle the unfamiliar foes.
Level 3:
Objective & Design:
Level 3 concludes with an intense encounter that stands out in difficulty compared to the previous levels, including within the level itself.
The final level was designed to feature a noticeable ramp-up in engagement and difficulty, driven by the introduction of higher-difficulty enemies.
Pacing & Engagement:
While there are occasional dips in tension between encounters to provide relief, the overall focus is on maintaining intensity.
As the player nears their goal of assaulting Hell, the design reflects this narrative progression by increasing enemy numbers and challenges. The demonic forces intensify their resistance as the player moves closer to the Hell portal.
Goal & Objective:
The primary objective of the three levels was to demonstrate my ability to implement proper pacing across multiple levels.
I developed a difficulty rating system to quantitatively measure the engagement and challenge of encounters.
The progression of intensity was tracked through a graph to verify whether encounters matched the planned difficulty. Playtest feedback indicated that the graph accurately reflected players' experiences during gameplay.
Player Experience:
The levels were designed to provide players with a well-rounded DOOM experience:
Level 1: Introduced the pace of combat and familiarized players with the gameplay.
Level 2: Introduced new enemies and weapons, ramping up difficulty.
Level 3: Challenged players’ ability to use the available tools against increasingly difficult enemies and larger numbers.
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.
Encounter Structure:
The first encounter begins with a hallway where the player faces three easily dispatchable possessed scientists. These enemies serve as a gentle introduction to the chaos, with some environmental storytelling through holograms showing their normal selves. This initial encounter establishes a low level of engagement, allowing players to build confidence with the mechanics.
Introducing New Enemies:
In the second encounter, the player is forced into a side hallway to retrieve a blue keycard, after which new enemies (Imps) are introduced. The imp enemies spawn after the player interacts with the keycard, providing an opportunity to face the new enemy type in isolation and adding variety to the encounter.
Player Engagement through Choice and Rewards:
In the final level, I added a sense of player agency by allowing them to choose between two paths. This choice determines which weapon they can upgrade (shotgun or assault rifle). Regardless of the path chosen, the player is rewarded with a weapon upgrade that will soon be used in a larger encounter, providing a sense of progression and engagement.
Rhythm and Contrast in Encounters:
To break up the rhythm of encounters, a dramatic change occurs with the introduction of the pinky demon in level 2. The player enters a room, and instead of the usual music and combat cues, there is a change in lighting, the doors lock, and the room fills with red mist. As the music starts, the pinky charges through the mist. This setup changes the rhythm, making the player more invested despite the encounter not being difficult.
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
Final Encounter Feedback: Testers initially found the last encounter underwhelming compared to earlier encounters.
Editor Limitations: Couldn't access in-game bosses, limiting challenge diversity.
Solution: Implemented an encounter using the glory kill drop system and Berserk power-up to re-engage testers and provide a powerful moment before the final fight.
Difficulty Rating System: Enabled more efficient encounter design and ensured consistent pacing and difficulty progression.
Tester Engagement: Average-skilled players’ engagement mirrored the Engagement/Difficulty graph, particularly in the final level, confirming the effectiveness of the design.
Satisfaction: Watching engagement align with the graph validated the success of balancing difficulty and maintaining player interest.
Complications/Issues
Self-Imposed Constraints:
Disabled glory kill resource drops for most encounters to have better control over health, armor, and ammo pickups.
Intended to create a more deliberate, controlled pacing and resource management system for players.
Resulting Difficulty from Constraints:
Without glory kills for resources, the game didn’t feel like DOOM 2016, leading testers to compare it to earlier DOOM titles (1-3).
Created a challenge in balancing the game for players with different skill levels, requiring extra pickups for lower-skilled players to ensure progression.
Working with Limitations:
Had to adapt the encounters to keep them engaging despite the lack of a typical DOOM mechanic (glory kill resource drops).
The Snap-map editor's balance towards multiplayer weapons further complicated the design, as damage numbers weren’t aligned with DOOM 2016’s single-player experience.
Learning:
Realized that balancing difficulty while maintaining game mechanics requires creative solutions to avoid breaking the flow of the intended gameplay experience.