/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4949794
>If you have a particularly useful starting weapon, you WANT to use the other weapons,
>either because they'll do certain things better than your starting weapon or they're more exciting to use or because you have an ammo surplus, etc.
>If you have a particularly useless starting weapon, you NEED to use better weapons because you won't be able to fight back without them
Doesn't make a difference. The starting pistol can be just a passable weapon without being able to easily fight back larger enemies.

Just because you make a pistol that's really good against zombies and imps, and kinda good against pinkies, doesn't mean the pistol will be especially great against barons, mancubi, arch-viles, or cyberdemons, enemies for which it would be worthless.
Your basic shotgun can still do better in both damage per shot and dps.

The starting pistol in Doom isn't actually a very good weapon at all, it does low damage, and it's really slow, and once you have your chaingun, there is zero reason to look at it ever again. It's such a hopelessly weak and unsatisfying weapon. If it shot faster, it could at least do a bit of stunlocking in a pinch, like in Duke 3D.