is it just me or is the level design in this game actually terrible

[BaconBiscuitsBaby]

The example that best stuck into my head is one level where you run down a short hallway to pick up a gold key and a shambler immediately spawns behind you. There's absolutely no cover to dodge behind and the shambler is blocking your way out, so all you can do is hope you had enough armor or health from the prior parts of the level, or get a quad damage from a secret area to kill it before it kills you because it has a hitscan lightning attack you can't avoid.

[=RaggA=]

Learn "The Shambler Dance". Run straight up to the Shambler to bait out its melee attack, step back to avoid. Once animation is over repeat. All while spaming it full of super nail gun (or double shotgun if you have no nails). Once you get the hang of this Shamblers become less of a problem unless there is more than one which dosn't happen often in the vanilla game. Don't bother with rockets unless you have quad, Shamblers take reduced damage from rockets and grenades.

[BaconBiscuitsBaby]

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

You used the secret difficulty but didn't know a shambler spawned there on that level

Did you get mad when the giant skeleton punted you off the cliff in Tomb of the Giants also?

I think it only spawns there on the secret difficulty in the first place, so.

Have not played dark souls

[sss]

The enemy spawns at some spots, yes, i'd consider it bad design. Quake is unique in that it has enemies that can kill you with one or two shots, and their attacks cannot be dodged, so when they catch you off guard, it often means certain death. Fortunately, these spots are rare. They did it a lot better in the second expansion pack "Dissolution of Eternity". It had the best enemy placement in any Quake levels in my opinion. Always challenging, but never unfair.

[zombie sparkledog what!!!!]

This is one example, but I definitely remember it. I don't think it's fair to a player who hasn't played the level before, but I never had a problem with it, and I can't think of any other situations in the game that are like that. The level design in this game is fantastic overall, less so the fourth dimension imo.

[ULTRA]

On hard and nightmare difficulty, just save nails for the super nailgun, get the quad damage, stand next to the gold key, fire back into the entry way, walk backward into the gold key, tada, you've killed the shambler before he can even hit you. And yes, you are supposed to know the shambler is there on hard and nightmare difficulty. You have quicksaves anyway, so lol.

And yea, episode 4 is all Sandy Petersened up with giant open areas, totally dark darkness, etc. I think he missed the memo and thought the game was a horror game or something.

Here is another way if you have nutz (at 7:47)

https://youtu.be/ODC5n5ngQKU?t=468

[Phoenix]

Originally posted by Very Ape:

Then don't play the game then. No one gives a ♥♥♥♥♥ whether or not you like the level design. You play on Nightmare then cry that you are dying. You're a fu ckin idiot, get good dweeb.

How about don't be rude? If you can't offer helpful advice in a courteous manner you are not a part of the Quake community. This kind of cheek is typical of console kiddies. Now go play CoD while the grown ups talk.

Originally posted by =RaggA=:

Learn "The Shambler Dance". Run straight up to the Shambler to bait out its melee attack, step back to avoid. Once animation is over repeat. All while spaming it full of super nail gun (or double shotgun if you have no nails).

I use the Axe for this. Great way to save ammo if you can pull it off.

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

Here is another way if you have nutz (at 7:47)

Now that's some skill.

[Doctor Eggman]

Originally posted by BaconBiscuitsBaby:

The example that best stuck into my head is one level where you run down a short hallway to pick up a gold key and a shambler immediately spawns behind you. There's absolutely no cover to dodge behind and the shambler is blocking your way out, so all you can do is hope you had enough armor or health from the prior parts of the level, or get a quad damage from a secret area to kill it before it kills you because it has a hitscan lightning attack you can't avoid.

Its funny because I can't remember ever having trouble at this part, a single Shambler is easy pickings.

The issue I found most difficult was the "Dopefish" level / Crypt of Decay.

If you're unlucky on nightmare you can end up with 2 angry shamblers on the top walkway with arrows firing at you from behind, it can be a real hassle to deal with considering the linearity, but its nothing a bit of actual thinking can't fix.

[DaisyInTheMiX]

if it's to difficult why not playing on hard difficulty.
Also a good tip: strafing and using your supershotgun (not the rocketlauncher)
Quake is even now one of the best fps games ever.
Try the lower difficulties and after that all other mission packs, there are very very nightmare ish even in easy mode.
PS: play with the epsilon Mod, graphics are much more beautiful.

[BadMojo]

You should read the book "the masters of Doom" it goes through the whole saga with the development of all of the id software games, and will give you some insite on why quake turned out the way it did..

Long story short though, quake was originally ment to be open world with RPG elements and the likes, but that idea was scrapped only to have doom style weapons and maze like maps in place of what could have been something much bigger.... The result probably would have been something like daikatana, but much better if John Romero pulled his finger out of dooms orifice during quakes dev cycle.

[CrackSmokingWarlock]

Depends on what kind of equipment you have. If you've got Super Nailgun, out damaging a shambler is ez. You can also move close to it to trigger its melee attack and step back to buy you some time while killing it.

[Erick]

Originally posted by DaisyInTheMiX:

PS: play with the epsilon Mod, graphics are much more beautiful.

Nothing is more beautiful than Quake with unmodified graphics on Quakespasm. Graphic mods are just crap.

Onto the topic, Quake on Nightmare is just unfair (and intentionally so), toning down to Hard is better suited, especially since admittedly some of the levels are kind of cheap. At the same time, it does feel nice to put your skills to the test on some of the parts that stump you badly.

[Serious Secare]

I don't neccessarily think the quake maps are bad, it's just the maps in doom were just better.

[ULTRA]

Uh haha, the majority of the Doom and Quake levels were done by the same guys and use basically the same principles but Quake's levels have verticality, shoot switches, traps, and trains. There are traps like OP describes all over Doom 1, and Doom 1 nightmare is hands down more difficult than Quake nightmare.

Originally posted by Lonely Heart:

The issue I found most difficult was the "Dopefish" level / Crypt of Decay.

Yea word, that's when you really start to feel the burn. The map is filled with fiends, shamblers, and death knights though and isn't particularly chock full of medkits so it's bound to wear you down.

Originally posted by Erick:

Originally posted by DaisyInTheMiX:

PS: play with the epsilon Mod, graphics are much more beautiful.

Nothing is more beautiful than Quake with unmodified graphics on Quakespasm. Graphic mods are just crap.

Onto the topic, Quake on Nightmare is just unfair (and intentionally so), toning down to Hard is better suited, especially since admittedly some of the levels are kind of cheap. At the same time, it does feel nice to put your skills to the test on some of the parts that stump you badly.

Quake on nightmare is probably one of the easiest id games at max difficulty, tbh, roughly in the league of Quake 2. You can only tolerate one hit in any of the Commander Keens, you take like two before dying in Wolf 3D, in Doom 1 and 2 the enemies respawn and move with no inertia, and in Quake 3 you are essentially fighting aimbots that have pre-programmed pathing to dominate maps, and in the boss fight Xaero goes instantly to the railgun. In Doom 3 you're incredibly slow and hitboxes are tight, and again in Doom 2016 you die almost immediately and it has permadeath.

Quake 1 and 2 are easily, easily the least difficult main line id games and the most unfair they get is springing large enemies on you without cover to test if you have conserved resources properly.

[Erick]

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

Quake on nightmare is probably one of the easiest id games at max difficulty, tbh, roughly in the league of Quake 2. You can only tolerate one hit in any of the Commander Keens, you take like two before dying in Wolf 3D, in Doom 1 and 2 the enemies respawn and move with no inertia, and in Quake 3 you are essentially fighting aimbots that have pre-programmed pathing to dominate maps, and in the boss fight Xaero goes instantly to the railgun. In Doom 3 you're incredibly slow and hitboxes are tight, and again in Doom 2016 you die almost immediately and it has permadeath.

Quake 1 and 2 are easily, easily the least difficult main line id games and the most unfair they get is springing large enemies on you without cover to test if you have conserved resources properly.

Personally, I find Quake 3 to be the easiest because of how short and easy it is to get around the bots if you know what you are doing. I have recently beaten it on the Spearmint engine which claims to have made improvements to the bot AI, and even so, I still find Quake 1 and 2 much more difficult, albeit some of it may be due some bad design on some of the levels.

Now Doom 3, honestly I never finished it on Nightmare to know how it is (I should probably get to it), but yeah, Doom 1 and 2 on Nightmare are still a pain definitely alongside Wolfenstein 3D, and the mazes in that game were already enough to get me to stop playing.

It's been forever since I touched Nightmare on Quake 1 and 2, and I can't really promise myself to finish them someday on Nightmare so maybe my thoughts have changed since. Then again, I'm not exactly a "good" player if I say so myself.

[Doctor Eggman]

Originally posted by Erick:

Originally posted by Mountain Man:

Quake on nightmare is probably one of the easiest id games at max difficulty, tbh, roughly in the league of Quake 2. You can only tolerate one hit in any of the Commander Keens, you take like two before dying in Wolf 3D, in Doom 1 and 2 the enemies respawn and move with no inertia, and in Quake 3 you are essentially fighting aimbots that have pre-programmed pathing to dominate maps, and in the boss fight Xaero goes instantly to the railgun. In Doom 3 you're incredibly slow and hitboxes are tight, and again in Doom 2016 you die almost immediately and it has permadeath.

Quake 1 and 2 are easily, easily the least difficult main line id games and the most unfair they get is springing large enemies on you without cover to test if you have conserved resources properly.

Personally, I find Quake 3 to be the easiest because of how short and easy it is to get around the bots if you know what you are doing. I have recently beaten it on the Spearmint engine which claims to have made improvements to the bot AI, and even so, I still find Quake 1 and 2 much more difficult, albeit some of it may be due some bad design on some of the levels.

Now Doom 3, honestly I never finished it on Nightmare to know how it is (I should probably get to it), but yeah, Doom 1 and 2 on Nightmare are still a pain definitely alongside Wolfenstein 3D, and the mazes in that game were already enough to get me to stop playing.

It's been forever since I touched Nightmare on Quake 1 and 2, and I can't really promise myself to finish them someday on Nightmare so maybe my thoughts have changed since. Then again, I'm not exactly a "good" player if I say so myself.

Quake 3 is pretty poor though regarding difficulty. On one hand its easy as hell with certain bots because they only use a specific weapon, etc Anarki with the rocket launcher. But on the other hand this makes them difficult as hell when you've got Xaero with the railgun or Hunter with the Lightning Gun.

The game's really inconsistant in my eyes.