The New DOOM Thread (2016)

[shihonage]

I still disagree with H-L butthurt. H-L was sane enough to keep most setpieces in the background where they didn't interfere with the gameplay or set them up cleverly enough to prevent significant interference either way.

Setpieces are not the only measure of linearity. Overall, HL's level design was far less allowing of freedom than was Doom's. HL was that stepping stone toward making FPS games into an "experience", which is where FPS design conventions started going to hell.

 

[Trodat]

He should have said Half Life 2. Also, wasn't the original Call of Duty a real FPS also? From what i remember it was the second one that introduced the decline elements. You know, the one that also happened to be multiplatform right out of the box.

First one already had a campaign that introduced the "cinematic" approach on FPS games, but it was a real PC shooter nevertheless.

 

[Psquit]

Mortal kombat called, he wants Outworld back... also inbred cacodemons.

Darksiders 3

 

[DeepOcean]

Don't get crazy with Half life guise, if Gaben was happy at Microsoft and never left, someone else would still invent Halo and CoD 2. Millions and millions of dollars can make men very creative at making decline. People get crazy with Half life but they forget that cover shooting to regenerate health, shooting galleries with clone enemies behind chest high walls, 4 hour campaigns, games released on an anual basis, endless cutscenes robbing the player freedom, cinematic takedowns, forced shoot the mole on turrets, brown military fetiche, press F to pay respects weren't invented by Half Life.

Half Life and Halft Life 2 were more the result of developers playing with the new technology at the time than some secret conspiration to make the decline. Half Life 1 and 2 are a mess of mechanics, puzzles, vehicle sections, physics engines, jumping sections, gravity guns, commanding armies of insects and all that stuff. If you look to Duke Nukem forever, you will see 3D Realms was doing the exact same thing even if alot more unsuccessful. Their goal wasn't to make annual cynical cash ins we have today but play with their shiny new toys. If you want to blame someone blame Microsoft when Halo's massive success on the consoles "proved" FPS could work on the consoles and the rest we know.

 

[tuluse]

Blame people who buy games*

*although, actually only partly to blame as I don't think there were any high profile games designed like Doom that failed, devs just went to make other things. I'm guessing Raven's games didn't sell as well, but they clearly sold enough to keep them in business this long.

 

[theSavant]

Mortal kombat called, he wants Outworld back... also inbred cacodemons.

The one on the left... it looks sad, depressed
The one on the top... it looks bored
The one on the right... it looks hungry "hup-hup-hup"

Amazing how Bethesda gave em real emotions. I can't see myself killing them. This is inhuman.

 

[DraQ]

HL might have been somewhat more linear than classic shooters, but:

• classic shooters have never been particularly nonlinear anyway.
• HL was also a lot more structured than most shooters out there which was an immensely welcome change that made it easy to overlook any linearity.
  
• HL had actually very solid systems - gunplay, AI - accompanied by very good graphics.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Didn't follow the discussion in the thread, but the gameplay footage is pretty laughable: a weapon wheel in muh Doom, accompanied by slow motion? One or two enemies at a time? Blu-glow awesum button executions?

Think I'll continue to play awesome megawads with gzdoom instead.

 

[DraQ]

Didn't follow the discussion in the thread, but the gameplay footage is pretty laughable: a weapon wheel in muh Doom, accompanied by slow motion? One or two enemies at a time? Blu-glow awesum button executions?

Think I'll continue to play awesome megawads with gzdoom instead.

 

[Executr]

 

[Trodat]

Piss filter, we'll meet again.

 

[shihonage]

HL might have been somewhat more linear than classic shooters, but:

• classic shooters have never been particularly nonlinear anyway.
• HL was also a lot more structured than most shooters out there which was an immensely welcome change that made it easy to overlook any linearity.
  
• HL had actually very solid systems - gunplay, AI - accompanied by very good graphics.

1) I just argued about this with some FB retard, who claimed that since Doom had a keycard progression, it was just as linear as a modern FPS. :facepalm:

2) It was indeed a "change", and HL's gameplay was quite different from other FPS. Whereas previous designs were derived from the question "what systems create fun", HL's gameplay was driven by "story" first, and systems second. You can go to any level of Doom1/2 and have fun, as it is a context-independent playground, with every nook and cranny being put there on purpose to control enemy placement and ammo/health and using level as cover due to player's fast movement speed. When you compare HL to that, you will see the decline. There's no strategy in HL in jumping somewhere to pick up health in combat, because it's a slow process. It has no real crowd control. Levels are designed not based on function, but based on "reality". It is a very deliberately paced FPS, full of dull sections for the sake of scripted story.

3) A feature doesn't automatically translate into fun. The variety in enemy's battle behaviors in HL was poor, weapons were less distinct from each other in function, it avoided crowd control battles due to "OMG GFX". You were lead by the nose from one controlled encounter to the next.

Half-Life was a good example of what happens when story/"realism" is injected into a formula that used to be about fun. It was a fresh experience at the time, just like there are some good films that you never re-watch again. It has no replayability, because there's no variety to gameplay experience, no depth. It was the beginning of the decline.

 

[tuluse]

HL might have been somewhat more linear than classic shooters, but:

• classic shooters have never been particularly nonlinear anyway.
• HL was also a lot more structured than most shooters out there which was an immensely welcome change that made it easy to overlook any linearity.
  
• HL had actually very solid systems - gunplay, AI - accompanied by very good graphics.

It really depends what you mean by linear vs non-linear. A lot of those maze levels in id and Raven games were non-linear even if you played one after another and even if you had to get keycards in a certain order.

3) A feature doesn't automatically translate into fun. The variety in enemy's battle behaviors in HL was poor.

This is just flat out wrong. Marines actually acted almost like people, while headcrabs, zombies, and the little dog things just charged in, then the other aliens had distinct behaviors different from them.

 

[Sceptic]

Glad to see support for my theory.

Which one?

 

[Infinitron]

Glad to see support for my theory.

Which one?

When it comes to me, that's a pretty good question.

This one: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...om-id-and-bethesda.81888/page-32#post-3926141

 

[Sceptic]

I've been talking about the superior importance of level design in shooters since before you were born I even had to brofist several Lyric Suite posts in a row because he was talking about Jedi Knight's level design.

On a more serious note, yes, the influence of this particular school of thought is obvious in early FPS design. Remember who Romero hired to replace Tom Hall on dungeon level [this was an unintentional slip btw - goes to show] design? Sandy Petersen, whose experience before that was entirely in P&P RPGs. Not just in terms of the levels being mazes, but in terms of them making sense as a location - not necessarily a real-life realistic location, but within the design paradigms of the game. This is why Doom's levels are so good, because they fully take advantage of the engine and its limitations, of the enemies and their abilities, to provide the challenge. This enemy or that powerup is in this specific location because that's what makes the most sense design-wise, because it's what adds some challenge or a surprise or a sense of danger or whatever, and as you said this is exactly the same thinking that goes behind placing things in a dungeon in RPGs. This is completely gone from modern shooters, especially when everything is so heavily scripted and the sense of surprise and danger boils down to a non-interactive cutscene where your PC gets ambushed and taken down (Medal of Honor 2010 has a record number of these, but I can't think of a single post-2005 FPS that didn't have this in droves). And this is the major reason modern FPSs suck so much - they don't have any level design to speak of.

 

[Gragt]

It’s even more evident with Doom 3: they used the same tricks of moving walls revealing monsters but since the levels are now so linear it ruins the suprise effect and becomes more of a chore than something that keeps you on your toes.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Hah, Doom 3. What a clusterfuck of decline. Tight, linear levels. Retard AI that just walks where you are while you wait for them behind a corner, which for the most part is the only way to kill them since you have neither the room nor the speed to dodge their shit. And the terrible attempt at emulating System Shock 2, which could have never worked on an "action" game even assuming the story and writing had actually been good or at least interesting. Contrary to some (apparently), i really liked the graphics and i was pretty impressed both by the lighting and by how detailed the environments were. I'm kinda of a sucker for those type of sci-fi settings too. They sort of remind me of when i first so Aliens as a kid (needless to say that a proper Alien game with this engine would have been amazing). But damn, did they have to make almost the whole fucking game like that? No change in environment until the hell levels? Really?

One of this days i'm going to have try the game again using something like this:

http://doom3.gamebanana.com/skins/127873

Though i'm not sure how much it is going to help.

 

[DeepOcean]

That repetitive animation when you use the chainsaw is ridiculous and the executions too. "Hey, do you like to repeat the very few animations we made a thousand times?" "Do you like to stop on the middle of a room surrounded by enemies just to see those cool animations over and over?". E3 is the proof that it isn't game designers that make games anymore, games are made on the Marketing Department and when the Marketing guys are satisfied they send a memo for the drones developers start making a game with all the features that guarantee a nice trailer and good reviews.

Game mechanics aren't made because they make sense or are fun, they are made because the companies want to monetize your ass or they are shallow mechanics, like those monster executions, that are there to impress on trailers, gamming "journalists" that are just gonna play 2 hours to make a review and the dudebros with a short attention spam that are going to play only the early levels and consume games as mindless as they watch TV. Games nowdays are made by mindless people for mindless people.

The retards that cheered every time a canned execution animation showed up as if that shit was revolutionary or good were ridiculous, actually, those people deserve to be hammered in the ass by Bethesda, I don't have pity, being little faggots, they may even love Pete Hines cock.

 

[Dayyālu]

I'm always quite surprised when people say that Half Life 1&2 are "Herald of the Decline". There have been countless discussion about the subject, but as far as I can see HL 1&2 are anything but the forefathers of the modern retarded shooter.

Sure, they introduced the "scripted" events, but they were in HL1 quite small, set-pieces that could even be lost or ignored, bar in some specific cases. Let's see....

1) Level Design. Anyone that says that HL1 had "realistic" level design has not played it recently. A ton of HL1 levels have only graphics that make them seem "realistic", but they don't make any sense in a real building. Factories work as platforming sections, parking lots and hangars are well-built arenas with different enemies and enviromental hazards. Even HL2 mantains some of the "game" logic of his forefather. I'll freely admit that they are less creative than Doom Levels, but fights in HL1 are anything but CoD script fests. Sure, the office levels are a tad uncreative, but we can see in Surface Tension at least an attempt to create some interesting situations. HL2 has a lot of very nice fights, that can be approached in a ton of different ways. Even the Episodes have several locations that do not make any sense in a "realistic" way, for example the zombie-infested hospital, but are merely excuses for nice gameplay. Sure, the Episodes also gave us also the terrible focus on the whatevergenericgirlthatIcan'tbebotheredtoremember and to pitiful "emotional engagement" attempts, but Hunter fights and the last Strider battle are very, very good levels. If more shooters where built like that, they would be still fun.

2) Enemy and Weapon variety. HL1&2 have a good enemy variety, and that's already better than 90% of the shooters in the market (without talking of contemporary shooters, that have mostly hitscan mooks and "big foes" fought abusing cover). We have HtH critters, human soldiers, alien foes, flying enemies.... the ingredients are all here. HL2 has less variety, but good fights are still very tense and fast. Nova Prospekt or whatever it was called is still in mah brain as an example of adequate levels with nice gimmicks and different enemies in the same enviroment.

3) Plot, dear god plot. If I read this thread, Half Life seems to be Planescape: Torment. God, Marathon has a more complex and interesting plot than Half Life. And its levels also follow a somewhat plot-dictated progression (you have to board the Phfor ship, for example). HL plot started to became a cancer in the Episodes, when they attempted to sell "emotional engagement" for whatever reason. All the other crap? Xen? Missile silos? Labs? Slave to gameplay. See Opposing Forces and the ton new enemies thrown in to enhance the gameplay options.

4) Half Life 2 is the last gasp of the traditional PC shooter. There is a reason there has not been a sequel: the genre is dead. HL2 with all its problems had still a lot of characteristics of the "traditional PC shooter". I get the impression that it's rather nice to hate it, but we see the last gasp of a dying genre and we point it as the culprit. Rather peculiar. If HL was the creator of the Decline, why we don't have sequels and the Episodes died quietly? And why we have CoD 11 or 12 and countless Halo clones?

Half Life 2 was one of the last specimens of what I like to call "the Second Generation" of PC shooters, that had titles from Shogo to AvP2 to Jedi Outcast to the first Fear, to -sigh- Unreal 2. Different from the traditional and God-given proper FPS of the early-mid '90, but still somewhat creative in design.

Mah stupid opinion though.

 

[Khorne]

And this is the major reason modern FPSs suck so much - they don't have any level design to speak of.

Not sure what you expected from this, it's not like variety and replayability are profitable for zenimax.
What you have here is yet another RAGE re-skin, designed to be a DLC platform, just like wolfenstein.
There is no id software without Carmack and TTimo. Just a name, cashing in on former glory, one level at the time.
That reminds of some other well known and formerly respectable company, tbh.

 

[retardation]

E3 is the proof that it isn't game designers that make games anymore, games are made on the Marketing Department and when the Marketing guys are satisfied they send a memo for the drones developers start making a game with all the features that guarantee a nice trailer and good reviews.

Well put, but it's been like that for the past 12-13 years.
The only thing that changed is that the suits became better at handling games PR. So when retards see the wide smiles of Phil Spencer and "Major Nelson" (we should also call Kotick "Mr. Fluffy" while we're at it) they think that companies do care about them.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Half Life 2 was one of the last specimens of what I like to call "the Second Generation" of PC shooters, that had titles from Shogo to AvP2 to Jedi Outcast to the first Fear, to -sigh- Unreal 2. Different from the traditional and God-given proper FPS of the early-mid '90, but still somewhat creative in design.

Prey (released in 2006) comes to mind as well, it was the last mainstream regular FPS as far as I know. It's a fun game, not the best gunplay (though weapons do have a unique look) and some popamole features (resurrection) but it has some fun gimmicks to make up for it (some environmental puzzles that use variable gravity, portals, protagonists' spirit form etc), interesting visuals and great atmosphere.

 

[DeepOcean]

E3 is the proof that it isn't game designers that make games anymore, games are made on the Marketing Department and when the Marketing guys are satisfied they send a memo for the drones developers start making a game with all the features that guarantee a nice trailer and good reviews.

Well put, but it's been like that for the past 12-13 years.
The only thing that changed is that the suits became better at handling games PR. So when retards see the wide smiles of Phil Spencer and "Major Nelson" (we should also call Kotick "Mr. Fluffy" while we're at it) they think that companies do care about them.

Actually, it got worse, from 2000 to 2010 you still got new single player FPS even if the quality of some is questionable. Everything changed when Bobby Kotick discovered there was a gold mine of making the same game every year instead of taking the risk to invest on new IPs. Look to E3 and there isn't a single FPS without a number after the name, actually the FPS genre morphed on this script heavy hell and most popamolers are still playing Call of Duty 2 and Battlefield II with new skins. The multiplayer shooter pratically killed the single player shooter and the very few single player shooters out there just follow Call of Duty footsteps with just a few gimmicks to not make people bored of 8 hours of Call of Duty. Good luck if a FPS fan want to play more than Call of Duty, same way if a RPG fan want to play more than a MMO, or a RTS fan want to play more than a MOBA. At least, for all its problems, kickstarter for RPGs kinda offer something decent to play.

 

[theSavant]

Hah, Doom 3. What a clusterfuck of decline. Tight, linear levels.

Yes, but it would be somehow okayisch if it has coop (though a 3d party mod gave that feature).

However nowadays I expected coop to be a part of Doom 4 - out of the box - and not made by some 3rd party. It's a total joke that it's not. I mean what else does the game offer except linear game and shooting mechanics which get old after the first level? At least give me more monsters and marine tactics... give me Rainbox Six Squad NPCs for a Singleplayer game. Make it tactical. FFs... squad combat against the hordes of hell... this gave "Clive Barkers Jericho" a special touch (even though the game was mediocre).