Being a fan of the Doom series for roughly 17 years now, I've enjoyed the series immensely and to this day still play the original games on a frequent basis. They are great games and have brought at least a few hundred (maybe thousand) hours of joy to my life. Big part of my life.

My question is this: Why the changes to the original two games' Nightmare! difficulty? Enemy fireballs do not move like they should, Demons do not run or attack as fast... this makes Nightmare! significantly easier than what I'm used to dealing with, and I was genuinely curious as to why this was changed. I understand the changes due to the Red Cross and their demands with the red cross icon, and I understand the censorship behind the Wolfenstein maps due to German policies. This is different. This is a complete change of gameplay elements.

As a speedrunner for the original games, this is a negatively impacting factor to me when I boot up Doom 3: BFG Edition, wishing to play the original two games. All the other difficulties are fine, but this is the only one touched and changed. So as I stated earlier, why was this changed? I'm genuinely curious here. Thanks!

I thought the only difference between nightmare and whatever was above it was monsters resurrected in nightmare.

This is false. On top of double the amount of ammo in Nightmare (as opposed to Ultra-Violence's normal ammo values) and the respawning enemies, the monsters also had the following:
Imp and Cacodemon fireballs moved at 50% increased speed
Baron of Hell and Hell Knight fireballs moved at 33% increased speed
Demons and Specters moved at double speed
Demons and Specters attacked at double speed
All enemies will attack MUCH more frequently than before, almost to the point that they will mostly stand in place and attack

All except the bottom one have been removed in BFG Edition from Doom 1 and Doom 2. This is a change that shouldn't have needed to be made because of CoD kiddies or because of console owners. I just want some sort of official answer as to why this was a change that needed to be made.

But they kept 4:3 to have it "old school". Lying pricks.

I'm more concerned as to the thought process behind these changes. I'm also concerned if this will ever be corrected. Hoping there is at least an answer that can be given here.

C'mon guys. Nightmare mode in the old Dooms on pc was always a joke. No more no less.
Or is there somebody here who actually mastered map 30 in Doom II in nightmare difficulty?

You underestimate the skill of classic doom players

I mastered Plutonia's "go 2 it" on ultra violence without cheats. I'm not that bad myself.
But that final map in Doom II was always a pain in the ass. When playing the original without mouse look!

So what? That doesn't justify changing it after freaking 19 years.

Saw your video, AltimaMantoid!
What a BLASMETHY indeed!

It's "blasphemy".

Do you notice that the PC version of the Doom and Doom 2 games is not a port of the PC dos version, but a port of the XBLA version to PC?

Look at the Ultimate Doom Episode 1 intermission screen. Do you see animated blinking lights on each of the building?

In Episode 2, do you see Fortress of mystery appear when you actually exit the secret level, and also seeing Tower of Babel gradually being built?

In Episode 3, do you see the animated blood waterfalls, especially the animation in the building known as Pandemonium?

In conclusion, they neutered the PC version of the classic doom games. It not like they had to reinvent the wheel you know. To think someone at id said "we didn't touch the classic games".

It looks like the nightmare skill on the XBLA version is fine, as I see imps shooting fireballs faster, and demons running around faster, so I guess it was only the BFG version that they "modified" or that they dun goofed.

Edit: I compared E1M8's demons in the starting room in the PC dos version to that of the XBLA version. The XBLA demons run slower than the demons in the DOS version, but not as slow as the normal speed of the demon in the other difficulty levels. The imp shoots fireballs at a faster rate, but the fireballs are still slow.

Case in point, as I said above, the PC version of Doom 1 and Doom 2 that you boot up from Doom 3 BFG edition is actually the XBLA version ported to the PC. It's stupid, but it's true.

Allow me to answer that with this: http://youtu.be/8Q3QDmOMnNc
Done by one amazing Norwegian named Henning Skogsto back in 2009. Done using Doom 2 v1.9 on doom2.exe (the original DOS executable) and without any cheats at all.

I can contest XBL version's Nightmare! mode is same as PC's.

Are you sure? I tested this out with steam Doom on dosbox and the xbla version. Maybe I should check again. In the XBLA version, the imps do fire fireballs at a faster rate, but I don't think the fireballs travel as fast as the original dos version.

Ok I tested it now. I am making one assumption, that the PS3, PC, and 360 versions of the game played from Doom 3 BFG edition are all the exact same.

I tested with PC dos version through dosbox, XBLA version, and PS3 version running through Doom 3 BFG edition, and tested the demons from E1M8 using cooperative. In the PC version, the demons move super fast. That's normal. In the PS3 version via Doom 3 BFG edition, the demons move normal speed. In the XBLA version, the demons move faster, but not as fast as the PC demons, but pretty close to slow, as much as normal speed.

One cold hard fact is that they ported the XBLA version of Doom to the PC for the BFG edition, and didn't try to refine the actual PC version. Pretty dumb I guess.

I just wish there was some sort of official word on these changes, but I'm not seeing it happen.

This was from 2011 on a friend's XB360, I do remember monsters attacked frequently but didn't focus on the fireball speed since I ran through E1M1 to get an achievement.

Stop with the console kiddies crap. I play both console games and PC games and I still love a good challenge! Try beating Contra Shattered Soldier with an S rank on ps2 and then tell me console games are meant to be easy.

Which is why I'd really love an answer from someone official, but there's still a lack of that in this thread. Do they read these things?

They definitely dumbed it down for consoles. I mean come on, looking ONLY left and right with an anolog stick? Good luck with that. It WAS in the original doom with the arrow keys, but you could always set it up to use a mouse.

that game was reallly awesome and realllllllllly difficult, i totally forgot about that game, i wish they would throw that up on xbox arcade

That kind of assumptions that the audience is less hardcoe is kind of ridicolous, but still, those easier modes should be modified, but the hardest modes improved for even harder challenge.

Well the percentage really is higher on non-hardcoe but that doesn't mean the hardcoe is less hardcoe than before. I don't think so, I know for my self, I really don't think that I would de-progess.

I think trying to achieve some derivative gameplay from a game that originally was not about it is selling the soul of the game.

You know I am not implying all console games are easy.

It's one thing to "dumb down" games for consoles, which I don't mind.

But it is another thing to infect consolitis to the PC version. So many PC games play like console games nowadays.

The exception to the rule...
But to be honest, leaving nightmare difficulty the way it was wouldn't have hurt anyone.
In fact, the original Doom games had a wide spread from ultra easy to brutally difficult to choose from in their difficulty settings.
Something that's missing in modern games.