Single player combat is just too friggin' fast

[Sparkie Shock]

There I said it. I find the combat in the main game just obnoxious beyond belief. To say I'm 'not having any fun' is a massive understatement. I've played plenty of Doom in my time .. from the originals, to Doom 3, Doom 2016 and I've enjoyed them all. I regularly play through Doom only on nightmare (not that this is really that hard by today's standards) and Doom 2016 on Ultra-violence and having a blast the whole time.

I've given this game a good 20 hours of play and I hate it absolutely .. and you can't see that after 20 hours I didn't give it a chance. So what's my problem?

Enemies are just up my ♥♥♥ the whole damn time .. no matter how much you move, no matter how fast you run (which is slow AF by the way) .. I can't get off a clean shot without being pounded by a tonne of enemies. Regularly no ammo .. and here's the kicker .. I'M PLAYING ON THE EASIEST DIFFICULTY!!!.

Sorry but on EASY mode .. I expect to have at least some fun .. and I expect the game to gimme so gods damned space! Combat is just a blur of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t and your guns seem useless. I fully admit to not being any kind of pro gamer by any stretch .. but this game is going against muscle memory .. especially of Doom 2016. The amount of times I've fired off the sodding flame cannon thing because I'm automatically trying to reload!!! Yes I realize you don't have to but the instinct to do so is there.

I wanted to love this game so frickin hard .. I really did. And I tried, and I tried. But every damn time I enter an arena there's tonnes of death going on .. mine! This should NEVER be the case in a game where you're supposed to be the badass! At the difficulty level I'm playing this should be a cakewalk. Well it ain't and all this f**king game has done is left me feeling bitter, angry, frustrated and depressed.

This game is a joke with how hard it is. I don't know what else to say about this. I'd be fully ready to admit If I'm a bad player .. that I somehow need to 'learn' the game better. But then trying other games again (Doom 2016) I find I'm pretty good. WTF is up with this game?

I need a cheat code to just slow everything the f**k down!

[Onni]

Originally posted by hetoreyn:

Enemies are just up my ♥♥♥ the whole damn time .. no matter how much you move, no matter how fast you run (which is slow AF by the way) .. I can't get off a clean shot without being pounded by a tonne of enemies. Regularly no ammo .. and here's the kicker .. I'M PLAYING ON THE EASIEST DIFFICULTY!!!.

Thats why you have a dash

[32x32 Riker jpeg]

This game doesn't hold your hand, man. It has it's rules and mechanics, and you're gonna play by them. Easy mode is to ease you into how this game plays, not ease you into shooters.
There's 3 thing you gotta do in this game or your're gonna have a bad time.

1: Learn who you can and can't chainsaw.
2: Learn to move *and* shoot at the same time.
3: Learn enemy movement and fire patterns.

[Schism]

I beat the game today and have no intentions to play it again. The combat is such a hassle and I miss the mindless shooting of past installments of Doom.

[Gin-chan]

It honestly doest sound like your kind of game? And theres nothing wrong with that. A friend of mine tried this and in his own words he felt that 2016 was superior and was more his cup of tea as well.

I mean I think i'm an average gamer and rarely play fps as its rare for a good fps to come out that got my interest. That said I Instantly played and finished this game on nightmare even though I died tons of times cause I loved the frantic chaos in the various battle arenas that I kept seeing in the various gameplay vids shown before release and wanted to experience it myself and dear god do I love all of it.

Then, I felt like a god when I restarted the game on UV compared to the UV on Doom 2016 so I dont know if it was because I got a whole lot better while struggling on nightmare or because the difference in difficulty was that large...Like seriously I finished 3 full stages with only 1 death...and am racking up extra lives..

[GepardenK]

You are not a "bad" player. This bad/good thing doesn't make much sense. I finished the last game on Nightmare, so I'd say I'm not bad at it, yet I died a lot going into this one.

It is true though that improving on the game will help. A lot. It makes the game slow down for you as your brain adjust to the new mechanics and suddenly everything doesn't feel so fast after all. I haven't tested this myself but I sometimes wonder if the easier difficulties are counterproductive to this, that they don't pressure you in the right spots and so you never really get to learn how to truly manage, which means you never get out of that spot where everything feels wrong/chaotic. That has certainly been the case for me in other games.

Have you ever played a Serious Sam game before? If so how do you feel about it in terms of speed/chaos?

[Vulpes_Inculta]

This game feels like a multiplayer arena shooter squeezed into a single player campain. I absolutely hate the arena level design, jumping sections, enemy respawn, colorful pickups bursting out of the enemies and overall lack of atmosphere. While the codex tries to tell us a dark and disturbing story, the game itself looks like super mario with guns.

[Gin-chan]

Originally posted by Onnisaurus:

Originally posted by hetoreyn:

Enemies are just up my ♥♥♥ the whole damn time .. no matter how much you move, no matter how fast you run (which is slow AF by the way) .. I can't get off a clean shot without being pounded by a tonne of enemies. Regularly no ammo .. and here's the kicker .. I'M PLAYING ON THE EASIEST DIFFICULTY!!!.

Thats why you have a dash

Yeah especially on nightmare you basically learn to dash on instinct whenever the cooldown is off or after a chainsaw/glorykill or get killed on the spot . Dashing is pretty much a must now in this installment imo

[32x32 Riker jpeg]

Originally posted by GepardenK:

You are not a "bad" player. This bad/good thing doesn't make much sense. I finished the last game on Nightmare, so I'd say I'm not bad at it, yet I died a lot going into this one.

It is true though that improving on the game will help. A lot. It makes the game slow down for you as your brain adjust to the new mechanics and suddenly everything doesn't feel so fast after all. I haven't tested this myself but I sometimes wonder if the easier difficulties are counterproductive to this, that they don't pressure you in the right spots and so you never really get to learn how to truly manage, which means you never get out of that spot where everything feels wrong/chaotic. That has certainly been the case for me in other games.

Have you ever played a Serious Sam game before? If so how do you feel about it in terms of speed/chaos?

Now that you mention it, Serious Sam is a great example of games like this.
I think it's way harder, personally, even though you get so much more ammo and enemies drop in much less damage, but they just throw so many of them at you all at once that it doesn't matter.

Love Serious Sam.

[Sir Tontonolous]

Then you shouldn't play it.

I'm not saying that to be a jerk. Doom Eternal is pretty different from the rest of the Doom games. If the combat hasn't clicked for you after a few hours, then the game probably isn't to your tastes.

Originally posted by Schism:

I beat the game today and have no intentions to play it again. The combat is such a hassle and I miss the mindless shooting of past installments of Doom.

While I do enjoy the combat of Eternal, the simplicity of Doom is something I never realized I appreciated until it was taken away. I don't hate the direction Doom has taken, but it would have been nice to have eased into it a little.

Unless this was the "Easing in." Then uh-oh.

[TyresTyco]

Tbh the game is more fun if you played nightmare first. That way you are so used to the chaos that a ultra violance mission feels like easy mode which is fun. Weird logic but it works here. At least for me.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

It's definitely not for everyone and that's okay. If you give it another try, try focusing on constantly dashing, moving at all times, and getting into the flow of just leaping around at high speed constantly while continuing to pick off enemies' weak points. The more you play, the less overwhelming and more oddly zen it becomes. Like this weird dance (I understand now why they called it the "Doom dance" lol.)

But if it never clicks for you, that's okay. No game is for everyone. And it doesn't reflect poorly on someone if it's not. Games exist for fun and escapism. If you can't find fun in this game, don't let it upset you. That's the opposite of what games are for. It's not worth it if it's sucking joy out of you rather than contributing to it.

Personally... it's the most enjoyable shooter I've played in ages, and continues to reveal more and more levels of the "dance" the more I play. But it isn't for everyone.

[GepardenK]

Originally posted by Deadly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Now that you mention it, Serious Sam is a great example of games like this.
I think it's way harder, personally, even though you get so much more ammo and enemies drop in much less damage, but they just throw so many of them at you all at once that it doesn't matter.

Love Serious Sam.

Yeah SS is less mechanically complex so I think it might be easier to learn for the lower difficulties, but it's definitely harder on the higher.

Ammo works very differently. You have more of it, sure, but since encounters are so large it's just as much of a problem. Unlike DE you can't refill just anywhere so conservation is more important and you have to make sure you control the right spots of the arena at the right time in order to stock up. Some arenas even force you to run directly forward towards the horde, the opposite of what you want to be doing, in order to get to new ammo spots in time (kleer valley style scenarios come to mind)

[Sir Tontonolous]

Originally posted by Deadly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Originally posted by GepardenK:

You are not a "bad" player. This bad/good thing doesn't make much sense. I finished the last game on Nightmare, so I'd say I'm not bad at it, yet I died a lot going into this one.

It is true though that improving on the game will help. A lot. It makes the game slow down for you as your brain adjust to the new mechanics and suddenly everything doesn't feel so fast after all. I haven't tested this myself but I sometimes wonder if the easier difficulties are counterproductive to this, that they don't pressure you in the right spots and so you never really get to learn how to truly manage, which means you never get out of that spot where everything feels wrong/chaotic. That has certainly been the case for me in other games.

Have you ever played a Serious Sam game before? If so how do you feel about it in terms of speed/chaos?

Now that you mention it, Serious Sam is a great example of games like this.
I think it's way harder, personally, even though you get so much more ammo and enemies drop in much less damage, but they just throw so many of them at you all at once that it doesn't matter.

Love Serious Sam.

Something that I love about Serious Sam and that both of the recent Doom games have failed to capture is how practically every gun has its use. You're constantly switching guns, not because you can only carry three shells and some loose change at once, but because you need a proper weapon to adjust to the situation.

Getting bumrushed by kleers/were bulls? Shotguns/Melee will help with getting up close and personal. Got a big baddie? Nothing a few rockets/grenades can't solve. And if somebody is too far away, that's what your sniper rifle is for. Even the bloody revolvers have utility late game for dealing with kamikazes without wasting bullets.

Gah, I gotta replay TSE again.

[32x32 Riker jpeg]

Originally posted by GepardenK:

Originally posted by Deadly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Now that you mention it, Serious Sam is a great example of games like this.
I think it's way harder, personally, even though you get so much more ammo and enemies drop in much less damage, but they just throw so many of them at you all at once that it doesn't matter.

Love Serious Sam.

Yeah SS is less mechanically complex so I think it might be easier to learn for the lower difficulties, but it's definitely harder on the higher.

Ammo works very differently. You have more of it, sure, but since encounters are so large it's just as much of a problem. Unlike DE you can't refill anywhere so conservation is more important and you have to make sure you control the right spots of the area at the right time in order to stock up. Some arenas even force you to run directly forward towards the horde, the opposite of what you want to be doing, in order to get to new ammo spots in time (kleer valley style scenarios come to mind)

Oh man, don't even get me started on Kleer Alley. I swear, the ammount of times I've run out of ammo trying to push upstream to get through it. And you HAVE to push forward, if you just stand there and try to kill them all, it'll drain every bullet you bring in there. Just gotta nut up and do it.

Originally posted by Sir Tontonolous Macouten™:

Something that I love about Serious Sam and that both of the recent Doom games have failed to capture is how practically every gun has its use. You're constantly switching guns, not because you can only carry three shells and some loose change at once, but because you need a proper weapon to adjust to the situation.

Getting bumrushed by kleers/were bulls? Shotguns/Melee will help with getting up close and personal. Got a big baddie? Nothing a few rockets/grenades can't solve. And if somebody is too far away, that's what your sniper rifle is for. Even the bloody revolvers have utility late game for dealing with kamikazes without wasting bullets.

Gah, I gotta replay TSE again.

I know what ya mean, it's a great feeling when you finally wrap your brain around it, and start logicing your way through arenas, like little puzzles. Taking the 4 or 5 seconds you have before all hell breaks loose to see what enemies are wear, knowing what's going to be effect at what ranges, and then doing the dodge dance while you murder a thousand guys in like, 2 minutes.

[Gin-chan]

Originally posted by Deadly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Originally posted by GepardenK:

Have you ever played a Serious Sam game before? If so how do you feel about it in terms of speed/chaos?

Now that you mention it, Serious Sam is a great example of games like this.
I think it's way harder, personally, even though you get so much more ammo and enemies drop in much less damage, but they just throw so many of them at you all at once that it doesn't matter.

Love Serious Sam.

Its funny... I remember absolutely hating the Serious Sam game that i played years ago. Guess now Doom Eternal has put me back in the mindset of probably giving the series another go if they are that comparable lol.