Wirehead Studios

Just a little random question for everyone.  Which class(es) do you use the most or only use?

As for me, I like them all, but I've always loved Q2 deathmatch.  I played it all the time when Q2 was in its prime.  I'm also a huge Doom fanatic. So Doom and Strogg are on top of my list.  Pretty good with them.

Earth and Arena are fun to use at times as well and I can get a few frags using them.  

I completely suck with Slipgate.  I do love Q1, but I never was good at it for some reason haha.  But I know the power it holds hehe.  I just can't harness it well.

Anyways, so yeah.  How about y'all?

 :beer:

Slipgate... All the way...
If i cant have slipgate, then probably quake2 as a nice second... after that, then the other 3...

But im a slipgate whore... everyone knows that...

It really depends on the map. On iksdm3, I prefer Arena/Strogg over all others. On Eternal Arenas, Doom all the way. On Deva Station, I like to play Earth. Any map which has lotsa jump pads & ramps, I have the most fun with Slipgate =]

I'd say my favorite to play is Doom because he can be a little reckless and it'll help him =]

Earth is my overall favorite class, but he sucks against slipgaters. If there's a lot of slippy's around, I tend to go doom.  ;)

DOOOOOM ! I love me chainsaw. :)

well i use all classes, but doom and slipgate is the classes i like most.

Weird,  I thought most ppl would use one of the characters that sport a railgun or earth model that has a sniper.  I like the game for the nostalgia it brings, I really could care less wether win or loose, just try to do the best I can with either Doom or slipgate.

I use earth for the mortar and the gats, not for the sniper rifle ;)

I use Slipgate and Earth only... wait, that's a lie, I do use Gladiator once in an extremely rare while.

I'm the best with Slipgate on every map, and also have the most fun with that class... but Earth has gatling guns, a mortar, and a napalm launcher... I can't help but use that class once in a while. :)

:hail:  Slipgaters!

Though I do tend to use the Strogg Troppers as well, mostly because I enjoy the railgun

why does this topic even excist? like you didnt know everybody was a bunch of slipgate whores.

/me Strogg-rails Woodsman before he can reach the Red Armor

 :D

doom - strogg - slipgate - earth - arena

in that order, slippy comes out faster depending on the number of slippy-whores

Depends on my mood, and who else is on the map as what class.  Lately here's my lineup:

Strogg whenever I can, mostly because it's satisfying to beat on people with the "weakest" class. :evil:

I might start out with Earth to get things going.  I love the rifle, and if there's something I can set on fire, well... :D

If the action is getting intense I'll go for the Doomer.  He's fast, he does a boatload of damage, and it's my best class.  I've been shying away from Doom for most matches whenever possible in order to give the other classes a fair shake and get some variety in my gameplay.  Doom is still my favorite and best of all 5 classes.

Slipgate and Arena I almost never use.  I might go Skippy once in a while, but I'm no good with the Slipgaters.  Arena Gladiators I don't care for.  I've never liked the Quake 3 weapons and I probably never will.

Definitely the Doom Marine.

Perhaps the best reason (for me) to use Doom is cause of the nostalgia factor...I still play Doom religiously, and as a result I feel right at home with the weapons and his physics (even his jumping feels like it WOULD feel if you could jump in Doom...good job on that).  The SSG is still just as satisfying as it was in Doom 2, and the Plasma Rifle is still brilliant.  I can sometimes kick serious ass with Doom.  I don't stand a chance against Slipgaters, though, even though Doom is by far the best class I've got.

After that, Strogg.  The weapon diversity of Quake 2 is one of the reasons why it was so cool.  This amazing weaponry really makes Strogg stand out in Generations, from the pinpoint, nearly one-hit-kill Railgun to the constant hail of lead from the flesh-shredding Chaingun.  His strafe jumping also helps a lot, and he seems to be able to take more of a beating than the other classes.

Earth is alright...I like that class...just a bit too slow for me, though.

Slipgate I suck with.

And Gladiator I never play as, cause I feel that playing as a standard Q3 character is not the reason Gen was created.

Parapsyche  you still play DOOM religiously? :-)  Me too,  I'm  sure most ppl would know this, but just in case you didn't, with the new advances you can play DOOM in high resolution such as in 1280 x 960 with beautiful graphics and no pixelation, and the DOOM character DOES look up and down and jump (although not much like in Q3).  It's called JDOOM, and I just finished going through ALL of DOOMI, DOOM II and some of the nightmare levels again after many many years, in all of its glory. BTW they have jhexen and Jheretic too, so I did Hexen (fun game, I had forgotten) too and I'm gonna do heretic soon.
http://www.doomsdayhq.com/download_util.php (http://www.doomsdayhq.com/download_util.php)

Do I detect a little bit of animosity to the slipgate character?,  I have seen some ppl refer to them as slipgate whores :-)  I haven't been in any servers with real ppl yet so I dunno what
that's about.

Me Strogg. Ugh.

Seriously, the amount of slippyness in the gen player community annoys me - I'm sure the air-control & only having two weapons that account for anything has it's nostalgia-value, but it's never struck me as the kind of thing you'd want to restrict yourself to. Oh well, I usually just play on random, so it pops by every now and then ;]

lol, yeah, I've downloaded ZDoom AND JDoom.

JDoom certainly kicks ass...the models for the weapons and enemies are top notch, considering they were all made from scratch, with only the sprites to guide them.  The lens flares and stuff really make it cool, and the extra depth provided by the 3D models really immerses you into the world of Doom.

I use ZDoom whenever I want some extra features, but don't wanna wait for the loading, lol.

Oh, by the way, for all you JDoom users, there's a Doom TC that was recently created called "Doom 64: The Absolution".  It's a perfect recreation of Doom 64, but with some levels replaced, and some new levels added (I think there are 34 in all).  You can access the 3 "Fun" levels, if you're keen on your Doom secret-finding skills.  He even incorporated new enemies (Nightmare Cacodemon, Nightmare Specter), the Nightmare Imp, the Motherdemon, and the Doom 64 exclusive weapon called the Unmaker (or Flesh Rifle).  New traps and stuff are in, too.

http://www.doom2.net/~elbryan/ (http://www.doom2.net/~elbryan/)

Go there to download it...it's well worth it, and definitely is a good challenge for Doomers.

I think the appeal of Slipgate is that Quakeworld was the first online DM for a lot of people and still has a strong following.  That and the rocket launcher fires a fast-flying, high-concussion rocket that does a boatload of damage and knocks people all around.  Skippy is pretty much a one-gun wonder though.  You either rocket or shaft or rocket THEN shaft.  Grenades are VERY effective but seem to be under-used.

I don't buy into the "Slipgate is unstoppable" mantra.  Slipgate's other weapons are a tad wimpy when compared to their counterparts across the classes.  Take away that rocket launcher and he doesn't stand much of a chance.  The other classes all have better intermediate weapons.  If Skippy gets a healthy dose of red armor and rockets he's very hard to deal with, but a freshly-respawned Slipgater is a free frag if you're tanked up as another class or at least have a shotgun-class weapon or better.  It really depends on the map, who's playing, and what weapons are available.  A long open map and any of the other classes can rail, snipe, or chaingun-snipe Skippy from a distance.  Up close and in tight it's anyone's guess.  There are ways.  Just remember to stay OUT of the water on Q2DM2!!!

well yes, slipgate - rl == dead slipgate.. but exactly how many level's don't HAVE a rocket launcher, or red armor? :P

Yupp doom 64 TC is cool i loved doom64 to the N64 but i missed the co-op but since we have doom64 TC now i can atlast frag those evil demons with my friends at LAN :)
 ya know footman is a member of the doom64TC team.

Anyway since im an ol QW player i do like slippy but i rather use the other classes if i can, however if a LPBs use the slipgate class i don't stand a chance with my uber ping ;/ oh well life is just not fair sometimes :)

I use Slipgate because I'm an old QW fan. Like Pho said, it was my first ever online deathmatch game... but I also still play singleplayer q1. It was the game that got me into first person shooters and always will be the best to me. Doom is nice, but Quake was just better to me... especially after playing the latter first.

As for grenades being underused... eeeehehe. I use them when I feel the need. Rockets are nice, but in some situations grenades get the job done A LOT better. And in water I use the nailguns... don't ask me why, but I can't hit jack in water with rockets. Unless there's more than one person in the water with me of course... AND I happen to have a shaft. :)

My first deathmatch experience was with Quake2, which I spent a LOT of time with multiplayer wise. I remember the good old days, three player LAN parties, when my father would actually play on a regular basis because he could win back then :P

Quake was, however, my first FPS expereince, and what really got my hooked on computer games (along with Diablo and SimCity 2000). I still love the single player in Quake :)

Hmm...  well I know many people will probably disagree with my opinion but...

1.)  Arena (I play vanilla Q3 quite a bit.)
2.)  Doom (DOOMY!)
3.)  Earth (Mortar pwnz.)
4.)  Slipgate (No real reason.)
5.)  Strogg (I suck large amounts of ass with this class.)

I first got into the Quake series by playing Quake 2.  I'm not sure why I'm so bad with the Strogg class, but my skills seem to transfer better into the Earth class.  I would also play as Slippy more often, but Slippy to me feels like an underpowered Arena gladiator.  (This is not true of course.  :P  It's just how I feel when I play as that class.)  I try using all of the classes for variety though.  Sometimes I'll switch to a specific class in a level if it proves advantageous.

Now, while I have no problems with people who prefer using the arena class, I like to see 'em change it up every now and then. Nothing worse than a player named Unnamed Player running around as arena :P

All classes are whores in one way or another  :lol:

Doom = Shotgun whore - master of FDA
Strogg = Rail whore - long and strong
Slipgate = Rocket whore - loves to rock your world
Arena = Well-Rounded whore - many toys available

Earth...? That's a hard one really... I think he's just a flamer  ;)

I dunno, arena is very much a bfg whore when you get it..

earth.. hmm.. does a lot of pounding but runs out of gas quick :P

anyhoo, I think this topic is dead..

I use the Doom Warriors class. Me + Plasma rifle = dead bots.

Yeah, I really HATE Slipgaters when they get the RL. Earth stands nary a chance because you can't get near a Slipgater without getting a rocket in the face.

Best bet if you're Earth is to wait for a Strogg or Gladiator to rail the biatch and then unload your Gatling gun(s) in his face when he respawns.

Yup. As earth, if you get within rocket range of a slipgater, your  goose is cooked. You don't have much time to kill said slipgater. If the Slippy is armored, you're not likely to get  the second chance that you need.

Oh well.

I have returned(for now). Slipgaters have the advantage of the single barrel shotgun being an autoloader and the shaft having a continuous beam to fry other classes with. They also drop packs when they die so it's good to shoot them. Strogg seems to have the best rocketpipe as it can reload quickly for follow up shots. Strogg also gets the more powerful of the 2 railguns and the biggest selection of guns to choose from. Too bad his melee weapon is that wimpy pistol, but then saws and axes can't handle the real stuff either. Doom seems to have the best double barrel shotgun. Earth sarges seem to have a good weapon in the dual gats and the flamethrower, but overall, earth seems to need tight spaces to lurk in to be effective. All of this is based on Gen.B because I haven't installed C yet. Tell me if the weapons have changed radiclly. DAMN it sucks to have a slow connection(or none at all). B)

Puh-lease. The Slippy shotguns just plain suck.

99c plays quite a bit differently than 99b. I'd try it if I were you. There's a LOT of changes.

I've been playing 99a, so I guess it will be like a whole new mod for me.

Oh yes it would. ;)

I find that the lightning gun makes for a very good spamming tool as well. It's quite annoying too, as it always seems to be in use when te BFG isn't :\

your gonna miss dooms supershotgun , trust me .

I meant it was fast, I didn't say it hit hard. Also the arena shotgun seems kind of wimpy too, probably because of it's wide scatter. One of the worst weapon problems seems to be the nails for the slipgate nailguns. The seem a little too slow to hit anything, especially on the Flying Plutonians map. The low velocity of the nails makes them only useful at point blank range. I've also noticed the Earth sniper rifle shoots low. A real gun has a drop, but only at very long range. A typical 30 caliber rifle has almost no drop until 300 yards. The Earth sniper rifle looks like a 50 caliber M-82 which is laser straight to at least 500 yards. Most maps don't have ranges that look like more than 200 yards. Anyway, on the longest yard, it's a challenge to use. I use Earth a lot, especially when I can get the torch.

The drop on the sniper rifle is deliberate. I know it is a bit extreme, but we wanted to make it more than a 'trail-less railgun'.

So we gave it drop and a richochet.

I've never really hit anything with the ricochet. I think I only saw it frag something once out of pure luck. I still think the slipgater nails might be a little slow. Will the knife and axe ever have animation? The axe in Generations looks way to good to just sit there. Even a simple downward swing would be good. This is a bit off topic, but it might be important: when bots load on the server for teamplay they don't always make balanced teams. I once saw a team with 4 or 6 bots against me and 1 bot. It was sure to be a bug, but I've also seen matches where 1 team will have all high ranking bots and the other will be all mediocre. Ex. Red- xaero, hunter, klesk Blue- mynx, ranger, stripe. With homemade bots it becomes even more obvious. Back to the original topic- I usually pick Earth because of the napalm launcher, the mp-40, and the mortar.

Sniper ricochet is fun, aim for the feet and watch 'em go flying :P

Arena's shotty is the.. second-most powerful? It's close in there with the strogg ssg. it's not that the spread is larger, the spread is a roughly evenly-distributed cone, whereas the strogg ssg seems to be a tad tighter vertically.

It's still an evil weapon, but the lightning gun and bfg are the most damage per second weapons arena has.

Slipgate's nails... well, they were always fairly useless outside of mid to close range. They're even more of a decoy weapon than doom's plasma. Just fire off a cloud, switch to a better weapon (ie rl/lg), and close on your target while they're dodging. Outside of the rockets, grenades, and lightning, the slipgate weapons are pretty poor overall, but that's the way it was in quake. The lightning gun is downright painful, and those rockets are EVIL. Not to mention the massive amounts of ammo slipgaters can obtain rapidly.

I shall continue to use Speedy Gonzales and his Sawwed-off, and chainsaw.

 Amen to that.  :thumb:

ya, like angst said, nails are for occupying your target whist you move in with your rocket launcher or LG...

Slipgate is the man on levels with a nice rocket/armor circuit to run... eg: the slimy place, or the edge, or any of those other levels where i can just keep running the same circuit and keep my armor full, rockets high, and health full, while covering a large portion of the map..

The best move in the world: knock em in the air with a rocket, and finish em off with a mid air shaft...

Of course, the tactic of "weapon camping" to get 5 rockets every 5 seconds has been eliminated from the upcoming version so it's going to be "run the ammo" instead of "run the guns" from here on out for ALL classes.  More on that later.

This is actually the best part about Gen.  There are so many different scenarios and the questions pop up about how to handle class A with Class B in situation C.  Remember that Slipgaters are pretty much dead once they respawn and if they're out of rockets they tend to run away from you and toward weapons and armor, just like any other class.  Railguns are great for a retreating Slipgater, and if you're up close and personal nothing beats the Doom rocket launcher.  For Earth, I recommend a few mortar rounds to soften the armor since the concussion range is large, followed by two soon-to-be empty gatling guns point blank, or a single gat at medium range, IF you can sidestep the skippy rockets.  Strogg's the one that has trouble with Slipgaters up close.  The best weapon I've found so far if you're in close and the railgun's recharge time is a problem is a chaingun with plenty of lead in it and don't let off the trigger .

Nails fly exactly the same speed they did in Q1, and yes they tend to be a bit useless.  Doom's plasma, however, is not.  It's much easier to score a hit with and point blank you can saturate someone with enough to gib them before they can blink.  Long range use the chaingun.


Vader:  We've stated before that animations are 1.0 material.  There are code reasons for this I'd rather not get into here.  Be patient, it's on the way. :)

BULL! In the original Quake, the perforator was SUPER. Since the nails traveled in a perfect straight beam anybody could snipe monsters all the way across a map. The difference is, most id brand monsters before quake3 were very slow moving or moved in predictable patterns. They broke down into 2 types: shooters and stabbers. The shooters usually held their ground and kept shooting constantly while the stabbers charged forward in a zigzag pattern or even straight lines. Nothing in Arena moves like that anymore, they all put Michael Jackson to shame. You might want to compare the speeds of the nails again. The super nailgun and Mr. Thunderbolt were the only weapons that gave you a decent chance against shamblers 1 on 1. As for the shotguns, I might have trouble now because I'm using the blunderbuss pk3 from polycount. I don't know if that could change the pattern size or not, but it sure seems to. The strogg super shotgun always had a weird pattern even on Quake2. The spread was practicly none from top to bottom but from side to side it was huge. The resulting pellet pattern looked like a bar. This was very bad if you had a buddy beside you that might soak up half the shotpellets and die.

In quake1 SINGLE PLAYER the SNG was awesome

But it sucked in DM. Players move too fast and too predictably for it to be of use beyond close range. It's best used to spam a narrow hallway in DM.

*Checks his notes*

Yup, still exactly 1000 units/second in Q1 and in Gen.  Game units have not changed since Wolf3d according to The Carmack, and I've also tested this using a mechanically converted Q1 map.  If you want to test nail effectiveness I'd suggest hopping on a few Quakeworld servers and aiming at actual players as opposed to shooting at something the size of a small barn in Single Player.  :blink:

or for that matter, bots  ;)

I love Strogg for their energy weapons.  I believe the Q2 Railgun, Hyperblaster and BFG10k are some of the best weapons in the game.  I could dominate matches back in the Q2 days simply armed with these, but they are quite hard to find.  Strogg falls in the explosives department.  When you're up against classes like Doom or Slipgate, they're rockets usually have a great advantage over yours.  Earth and Arena have some power over yours as well.

I love Doom for their shotguns and speed.  Through and through.  Even the single barrel is badass.  Just like in the old days.  I played some Doom deathmatch in my youth and the shotguns were weapons to be feared!  Doom falls in the fact that hes pretty easy to kill.  A few clicks from the other class and hes down.  Sure hes fast and can be reckless, but you gotta be careful.

Slipgate is all about the explosives, but I believe he falls in other departments, like shotguns.  The nails have advantages over bullets and disadvantages over bullets.

Earth...I love for their uniqueness.  In a game where many classes have simplistic weapons, you have a flame thrower which works in a way I've never seen in a 1st person shooter.  A mortar launcher which is an awsome blend of Grenade Launcher and Rocket Launcher.  And that Sniper Rifle is just a sight to behold.  Plus his Gats are awsome as well.  Its safe to say Earth excels in the bullets department.  But his problem is, almost everything uses bullets.  Also, he's fairly difficult to get good with.  But not as hard as Strogg, in my opinion.  Earth's weapons really don't have any downfalls...you just need to know how to use them.

dualgats + doom = instagib

The one major downfall about Arena is that he has no major trump card for a weapon (aside from the BFG - which is a major balance issue ATM). Earth has dual-gats and the armor for a sustained encounter, Doom has his very powerful shotguns which he usually has easy access to, Slipgaters have their RL which disorients as much as it damages and Strogg has amped-up Railgun, which takes out opponents even with light armor.

Arena performs best when he can take on opponents one at a time, where he can properly soften them up, gradually wearing them down and then delivering a fatal shot. 1v1 or small games are where he excells. Versus multiple people, his time to kill an individual target is limited, and he struggles, often dying between two people while he's trying to kill one.

Now, while I'll admit the arena class isn't the most powerful anywhere, he also doesn't have any glaring weaknesses. Decent armor, he doesn't take too much damage, he's not horribly slow. And the arena weapons are fairly decent, a good shotgun, the machine-gun has a better damage rate than, oh, say doom's pistol. The rocketlauncher isn't the best, but it's got a decent radius and gets the job done, the plasmagun is evil if you know how to use it, the lightning gun hurts, a lot.. And the bfg, well, the bfg is the bfg..

Even though it's the least extreme class, the arena gladiators are still nothing to scoff at.

The secret to Strogg is to use his phyics to your advantage, as well as pinpoint accuracy with that railgun. Rail + Chain = Dead. The hyperblaster is actually one of the weaker plasmaguns in the game, barely coming out ahead of the Nails. The BFG10k is good for clearing a room though.

We're doing our best to stay true to the originals. And while Doom may die easily  with low armor, currently neither his health or armor count down, and armor is easy to find. At 200/200 it takes 400 damage to kill him, and he's fast enough to get away when he gets low. A tanked Doomer is the hardest thing to kill in the entire game. We're changing Doom's armor for .99d to be back to the doom original absorbtion rates and stacking.

Slipgate is ALL about the rocket launcher and shaft. The grenade launcher is a portable minefield, and the shaft is the strongest lightning gun/chaingun class weapon in the game, but it's ammo is very limited. Everything else he has sucks in DM

This is the best description of the Earth class I've ever heard. I might steal this in the future. ;)


Which is exactly how we wanted Arena to be, right in the middle.

Could you elaborate on this?  I'd love to be the Strogg (Quake 2) player I used to be back in 1998 :)


Why thank you ;)  I try.

Strogg is slow if you don't know how to use his strafe-jump. He also gets a boost to his jumps when going uphill (ramps, not stairs), and can doublejump up boxes.

All these function exactly as they did in q2.

Yes, Doom's armor stacking has been changed to the original Doom absorbtion rates.  At present it's still yellow and red armor, as opposed to green and blue (which will change for 1.0) but you get the idea.  We're not giving him 100 for yellow and 200 for red on pickup, however.  Like Slipgate we cut those in half so that other classes can stand a chance.  It's still 50 for yellow, up to 100 max (helmets can go over this) and 100 for red, up to 200 (max is 200).  Yellow armor will NOT stack on top of red and won't replace it unless you're seriously low on red armor.  This makes it harder for the Doomers to get to 200 armor and give him a tougher time on maps where only yellow armor is available.

On the upside, Doom's plasma and rocket projectiles have been corrected for their in-flight radius to original Doom levels (missed this in 99c somehow) so the plasma rifle is going to be MUCH more desireable a weapon.  I've tested this and it feels right on to old-school.  Plasma = fear again.  If you're up close to a Doomer and you see the blue glow on his gun I'd advise running for it... IF you could outrun him that is. ;)

As for the Q3 BFG being a balancing issue, we have a fix in the works and it will be cvared so server admins can use the old one if they wish, but defaulting to our new effect.  Sorry, no spoilers on what we're doing.  It may or may not make .99d, depending on time constraints.

Perhaps some will disagree with me but...

The Arena class's GL is excellent for warding off chasers, and it is also useful for taking out large groups in small areas if you're well armored.  I think this is also why I love Earth's mortar.  :P  The only difference is that Earth's mortar also makes for a hell of an offensive weapon as it travels a much greater distance and at much faster speeds.  :D

OK, what sort of connection speed does it take to hook up to a server and actually be able to play? Mine usually runs at 44000 bps and I'm using a chipset instead of a video card. I think my mug has garbage in it.

To Gen or Quake1?

In q1 you'd be fine.

In gen you'll be hurtin, not so much from the connection, but from the video card. Make sure you turn all video settings down or off and you should be ok. Reboot manages a steady 300 ping to the WHS Central server, and he's on a modem in  Sweden.

I recently tried to join one of your games, but my computer said getting info for 1 servers and just sat there. The one server never popped up. Can you tell me why? Sometimes I'm tempted to put an 8mm slug through my Emachines clunker(and sometimes my own head). Earth class is supposed to include biker models right? I always pop up as the default "Eastwood" model. I guess that's fixed for the next version too isn't it?

I noticed some issues with a few of your weapons.

-In Doom, if I'm not mistaken, rockets, plasma, and BFG glowy death balls travel at the same speed.

-The Doom shotgun fires seven pellets that do equivalent damage to pistol shots. The SSG fires 20 pellets a pop.

The plasma and BFG bolts are a LOT faster than the rockets in doom.

And we had to change the SSG a bit. In .99a it was the deathcannon. You'd probably die even if half the pellets hit you.

Biggest difference between Doom and Generations is that Doom had random damage values for a lot of its weapons. If you caught the extreme low end values, you could actually survive a direct BFG blast. We simply used the average damage in Gen.

Then something's wrong because you only sustain 100 damage in Doom on average if half the pellets hit. If you have armor you should survive 10 pellets and a tanked Doomer can survive a point blank blast with health and armor to spare.

Average damage on the SSG in the original doom is 225. That requires greater than 100/100 to survive, which is excessive. Half of 225 is 112.5, which would still kill you unarmored.

The SSG in gen does 176 now if all the pellets hit. That's still a LOT of damage, especially since shotguns are so common.

yeah.. the .99a doom ssg was a deathcannon *nostalgia*

The rocket, plasma, and BFG projectile speeds in .99c are 100% accurate to Doom, and I have the Doom source code to back it up.  As for damage...  We could implement random damages easily, but a LOT of players wouldn't like that.  It may make it as a server-side option later, who knows.  As far as nerfing the Combat Shotty, it was needed.  Even I get a bit miffed when I get nothing but point-blank SSG's to the face in a game.  Considering how common the shotgun is in Quake 3 you basically would end up with an instagib cannon on every map for only one class - the fastest one at that.  With random damage I could see going up that high, but not a fixed damage value.  The Combat Shotgun did 20 * 5, 10, or 15 points.  That's as low as 100 and as high as 300.  You read that right, 300 freaking points of damage.  We took roughly 60% of the max damage value for the gun and went with that.  Same as the single shotgun, but it's around 70%.  It did 7 pellets * 5, 10, or 15 points.  That's as low as 35 and as high as 105.  Yes, the single shotgun in Doom could feasibly kill you with one blast.  The SSG could kill you with 200 health and 100 blue armor if it did the maximum damage.

As for taking "half the pellets" in Doom and living, that depends on your Deathmatch skill setting.  I've played enough ZDaemon servers that had nothing but Dwango5map01 loaded to know what that !@#!@# super shotgun can do with 1/2 the pellets.  Believe me, you will NOT live through it.  This was one of those things that had to be done.  I'm a hardcore Doom fan, and even I don't regret the change.

As for random damage values... I like the idea, but random number generators have shown a rather vehement dislike of Angst :unsure:
And as such, although I like the idea of Doom's ssg maxing out at 300 again, I have the odd feeling I'll have a number of shots that do roughly 75 point blank. So it's questionable. However, there are a number of items in .99d that I'm liking, but you'll all have to wait to see them. :evil: