This game feels like a very poorly thought out mess

[DarkCobalt]

I loved the original, and of course this one seemed to be getting glowing reviews, so I decided to give it a shot. So far, it's a huge mess.

Firstly, the level design. Why did there need to be platforming? The levels feel very pointless since the platforming is largely linear, and the "secrets" have thus far been "turn left and you'll find a secret!" or "Jump-dash and you'll find a secret!" The old one felt like legitimate secrets, weird scaffolding you could climb up to and suddenly run across the level to a corner you didn't know existed, etc. On top of all of this, in general the levels are very arcade-y, which isn't usually bad for this type of game but it seems overly nonsensical. The previous one's keycard system felt natural, you need keycards for the humans to get around. Here, there's big floating green buttons that I need to shoot, why are they there? Where did they come from? What's with the monkeybars everywhere? How come I can't climb other rocky surfaces, but have to rely on this strange foam-like material? None of it feels natural or well-placed. All of a sudden I'm playing 3D Mario.

Secondly, the combat. It's generally fine, except there's too much fluff. It doesn't help that all of the enemy encounters have a rock-paper-scissors nature. Constantly switching grenade types, firing modes, weapons, etc. It's a huge spamfest and is incredibly messy, not at all like the clean Quake-like combat of the first game. And I never thought I'd say this, but I dislike the chainsaw mechanic in this one. The ammo pool is so small it becomes a persistent necessity to use the chainsaw. One moment you're spamming weapon swaps, the next you realize you're out of ammo and suddenly need to grind the nearest trash mob to a pulp just for a handful of shots. Rinse and repeat every 20 seconds. I don't know, personally it's just not clicking, there's no zen-like flow to the whole ordeal like the first one had.

Lastly, the load of extra crap. I'm just not a fan of all of these new features. Armor perks that seem to be so niche to the point of not existing? Perks? Weapon points? Ship upgrades? A BATTLE PASS??? What is this, Destiny 2? There's so much that didn't need to be here. I have no idea if any of these armor effects or weapon upgrades will feel impactful, again it's all fluff to me at this point.

I'm getting the sinking feeling they tried to do too much to "innovate". They seem to just be borrowing ideas from other games, and slamming them one-by-one into DOOM without much thought or care. I'll keep playing it, since there is some amount of fun to be had, but man it's just doesn't have the same raw energy as the first one did.

[Tsar Platinum]

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Apologies in advance that I, too, will be dumping a wall of text cuz I'm bad at getting my ideas across concisely.

Nguyên văn bởi Sierra-117:

I don't think the argument about games letting all the players play however they want is very valid.

If you don't play to a games rules, I don't think you have a right to complain about the game limiting creativity or dampening your fun.

I can understand that this style of gameplay isn't really for everyone, I get that. But that doesn't make it bad. Just because you can't whip out a super shotgun and destroy everything in your path with it and just it alone, doesn't make it bad game design.

I propose for a moment that we take a look at say, Overwatch.

The game makes it apparent that certain heroes are used to counter certain heroes.

For example, if Pharah is flying over your team, raining rockets upon you and you keep dying, what you're supposed to do, is pick a character that can counter her.

If you don't do this, and you get destroyed and utterly countered by Pharah, yet refusing to do anything about it, it's not the games fault. I admit, Overwatch is not perfect, and there are some op heroes and ♥♥♥♥ (Idk, haven't touched the game in like 3 years)

I think people's biggest mistake, was entering this game thinking it would be like 2016, despite all of the promos and news about the game saying the opposite.

Again, I don't blame people for not liking this style of gameplay, but that doesn't make it bad.

I agree with you here to a degree, but I still have some contentions in that regard, that boil down to Doom Eternal being part of a series, rather than a purely standalone game like Overwatch.

That is to say, once a game series has established its overall formula, it's generally expected that, regardless of what new stuff you try out with each succeeding title, the formula is still recognizable and familiar underneath. You can see this with stuff like the 3D Mario games or the Hyrule Warriors spinoffs of the Zelda games. Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy all try out some -radically- different things, yet each game still feels like a direct sequel with gameplay that you can pretty much instantly recognize if you've played another game in the series. Hyrule Warriors likewise diverges a great deal from the main series Dynasty Warriors formula, yet is still totally recognizable as ultimately being a DW game in spite of those differences.

Meanwhile, Doom Eternal strays so far from classic "Boomer Shooter" design conventions that it basically isn't even in the same genre as the entire rest of the series anymore (discounting the very broad genre of "FPS", of course). It feels more like taking the design conventions of multiplayer-only Arena Shooters like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament, and giving them a properly fleshed-out campaign instead of the generic "just play bot matches with cutscenes in-between" setup the genre normally gravitates towards.

Mind you I'm not saying that's a -bad- thing, but it's definitely jarring when you take an established IP and turn it so utterly on its head that the gameplay is scarcely comparable to the previous games. Simply put, if they wanted to give us a campaign with this gameplay, it'd have been better to make it as a single-player tie-in game to Quake Champions, where the gameplay would've actually been a match for the IP, or just make a new IP entirely to introduce their new gameplay style, instead of taking an IP whose fans are expecting a particular style of game and tell them "hey sorry but this one's -completely- different" and just expect everyone to be totally fine with that.

That's what I'm getting at with the whole "devs shouldn't try to force players to play a game a particular way" thing. Like, it's fine when they're doing that for a new IP that's creating its own style like Overwatch did, and in turn pushing you to play in that new style. Likewise, someone who loves Boomer Shooters would be foolish to jump over the Gears of War to complain about the cover-shooting and regenerating health just because they want to try playing it the same way they would Doom 1/2/2016.

In that regard, the big difference with 2016/Eternal's case is that the devs made a game that fit the Boomer Shooter mold while still doing something new with 2016, then seemingly got upset when fans of the genre played it like they would any other Boomer Shooter. Instead of then doing the more sensible thing and going "well, we don't really wanna make Boomer Shooters, so let's make our next game a singleplayer take on Quake Champions/A Brand New IP instead!", they went "alright, so because we don't like Boomer Shooters, we're gonna make the next Doom a -totally different genre-!", and alienated a large portion of their fanbase in doing so.

The stuff about the Marauder and weapon uses was here and I cut it for brevity's sake

One thing I do wanna point out is that, at least to me, weapon mods basically amount to each being different weapons, so from my perspective it comes across as less "I can use the Plasma Rifle to stun lock enemies, heat blast big groups of fodder, or detonate shields" and more "I can use the Microwave Ray to stun lock enemies", "I can use the Heat Vent to blast groups of fodder", and "I can use the Plasma Rifle to detonate shields". I feel like as far as that point goes we can probably just chalk it up as a different in how we each quantify that sort of thing.

Yeah, the Marauder is indeed pretty easy, but in that same regard he's pretty tedious to fight. In the entire campaign + first level of the DLC I can't even remember him ever being spawned alongside anything other than fodder besides the one time you fight two at once? And I think that's ultimately my problem with him: rather than find interesting ways to involve him in bigger fights, the devs only ever used him as a very lackluster "finale" for some areas that you fight in a completely formulaic way every time.

In that regard, I don't actually think that my lack of enjoyment of Eternal's gameplay loop is what makes it "bad" (or at least, imo, worse than all the other Doom games). Like you said, just because the loop isn't my style doesn't mean it's bad. I certainly have my contentions with it, but those are ultimately far smaller gripes than what really knocked the game down a few rungs for me: The encounter and enemy design.

AND IN THAT REGARD THERE'S A TL;DR AT THE BOTTOM BECAUSE WHOOWHEE THIS TURNED INTO A RANT, DIDN'T IT?

Boomer Shooters historically use an approach to enemy design where each different foe fits a particular niche. Doom 2 is a great example of this: Archviles are designed to restrict what rooms you can safely enter while also taking target priority due to how they revive lesser foes, Arachnotrons keep up constant pressure to force you into constant movement, Mancubi fire in a staggered pattern where you'll run into the off-angled blast if you overstep your dodge, Zombies force you to have quicker reflexes than you'd normally need to avoid taking hitscan attacks, Cacos act as long-range, erratically-positioned extra pressue, Revenants require you to pay extra attention to the map geometry to ensure their missiles get caught on something, etc.

By comparison, Doom Eternal has way more enemies than Doom 2, but so many of them fill -exactly- the same roles as one another. Realistically, what's the meaningful difference in gameplay approach between the Hell Knight, the Hell Knight With Swords™, and the Whiplash? Why are Cacos & Pains, the only two enemies that could be spawned out over open air where they could act as long-distance artillery, only ever used for that purpose during the piddly outside-of-an-arena combat moments, then when you actually enter arenas they're just spawned deadass in the middle of the room where they promptly just start biting/punching at you? Realistically, what's the difference in behaviours between Imps and Gargoyles, or Soldiers and Super Zombies?

Enemies like Revs and Hunters were supposed to have threatening homing missiles, but they just end up being a non-factor because a single dash (and you're -constantly- dashing) causes them to miss. Lost Souls basically aren't an enemy outside of a couple of Secret Challenges, because Pains are they only way they spawn, and they orbit around the Pain before being fired as a one-off missile instead of actually acting independently. Why, for the love of god, is every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemy spawned around the middle of the room? Serious Sam 4 is out here spawning the enemies that fire homing shots up in castle battlements, spawning the flying guys in the distance so that they pepper you with shots from afar while you fight other enemies, slowly closing in to slam you with dive bomb attacks if you didn't strategize a means of dividing your attention between the near and far opponents, having charging enemies that actually -stay a threat- instead of taking extended breaks where they're so completely vulnerable it's laughable, and etc and so on. Meanwhile, nearly every Doom Eternal fight is the exact same, monotonous "enter 2-floor square/circular room. 10 fodders, 2 heavies, and possibly 1 superheavy spawn. When one of the heavies dies, spawn another heavy until quota is reached. Spawn fodder indefinitely because we wanted to remove ourselves from Boomer Shooter resource management as far as physically possible with our incredibly forced chainsaw mechanic".

The Slayer Gates were seemingly the -only- areas in the entire game where the devs put actual thought into wave order, spawn location, and etc. Meanwhile, all of the main level stuff felt completely cookie cutter, due in combination to the incredibly lazy spawn locations, and the samey enemies resulting in encounters that have completely different types spawning still feel like nigh-identical fights.

I learned with time & with getting full access to my arsenal that the gameplay loop has merit even though I personally don't like it and don't think it belongs in a Doom title, and was getting some solid enjoyment out of it around the late midgame, but by the endgame everything was so repetitive that it wasn't even -challenging- anymore (played on UV, as a note). I played the two Master Levels I have access to right on the heels of beating the Icon of Sin (not in the mood to drop $5 for the third) and they were downright -boring- with how formulaic the fights had grown. It was just dodge dodge dodge, fire some rockets at the big guy or a freeze/chaingun combo at the bigger guy, chainsaw an imp or two, repeat until arena over, and not even the DLC has managed to assuage that feeling of just doing the same thing repeatedly thus far.

TL;DR: it's not the combat loop that has Eternal sitting at the bottom of my theoretical "Doom Tier List". That just has it on my "Should've been another IP so as to not alienate fans expecting a proper Doom-style sequel" list. It's the sheer laziness of the enemy and arena design. Samey arenas filled with samey enemies that are spawned in samey locations simply lacks the variation of challenge provided by classic Boomer Shooter map & enemy design. Rather than put me in a massive variety of combat situations to repeatedly change things up and throw me off for additional challenge, Doom Eternal basically just goes "hey, how good at this one thing are you yet? are you better at it now? how about now? how about now? how about now? how about now?", and no matter how much I scream at my monitor "YES DOOM ETERNAL, I'M ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD AT THIS NOW, DO YOU THINK WE COULD CHANGE IT UP A BIT SO THAT I'M ACTUALLY BEING CHALLENGED AGAIN?" it just keeps going "how about now? how about now? how about now?" like a broken record.

So anyways thanks for coming to my Ted Talk/Informally-Formatted Doom Eternal review. I give the game a flat 7. And before anyone tries to argue that that's a high score given my opinions on it, I'll note that I score on a standardized-test-esque grading scale. E.g., 7/10 is a C-, Slightly Below Average, where pretty much the entire rest of the Doom series is sitting comfy at 9 or 10/10s, which are some degree of Very Above Average or Practically No Issues, respectively.

So yeah, sorry that I'm just dumping a massive wall of text on you, I had dental work done today and the meds they used have me too loopy to actually play games right now, so I decided to burn time writing this essay instead. I hope, even if we remain in disagreement, that it was at the very least informative as to how some of us feel over here on the other side of the pond.

This is very well written. I think we can agree to disagree.

I agree with some of the stuff in here. Like the point about Marauder being placed with fodder demons.

There is probably one time I can think of where this wasn't the case, which is The Holt, and I think they spawn a Marauder with a Tyrant. I agree with you in that sometimes it's a little boring how they just use him as the challenge, instead of pairing him with other demons. But luckily that seems to be changing.

Also that bit about the game asking you "How about now?", I personally really like. It makes encounters interesting. Like the double tyrant and doom hunter fight in The Holt and the SGN Master Level

[The Grin]

Nguyên văn bởi Sierra-117:

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Apologies in advance that I, too, will be dumping a wall of text cuz I'm bad at getting my ideas across concisely.



I agree with you here to a degree, but I still have some contentions in that regard, that boil down to Doom Eternal being part of a series, rather than a purely standalone game like Overwatch.

That is to say, once a game series has established its overall formula, it's generally expected that, regardless of what new stuff you try out with each succeeding title, the formula is still recognizable and familiar underneath. You can see this with stuff like the 3D Mario games or the Hyrule Warriors spinoffs of the Zelda games. Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy all try out some -radically- different things, yet each game still feels like a direct sequel with gameplay that you can pretty much instantly recognize if you've played another game in the series. Hyrule Warriors likewise diverges a great deal from the main series Dynasty Warriors formula, yet is still totally recognizable as ultimately being a DW game in spite of those differences.

Meanwhile, Doom Eternal strays so far from classic "Boomer Shooter" design conventions that it basically isn't even in the same genre as the entire rest of the series anymore (discounting the very broad genre of "FPS", of course). It feels more like taking the design conventions of multiplayer-only Arena Shooters like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament, and giving them a properly fleshed-out campaign instead of the generic "just play bot matches with cutscenes in-between" setup the genre normally gravitates towards.

Mind you I'm not saying that's a -bad- thing, but it's definitely jarring when you take an established IP and turn it so utterly on its head that the gameplay is scarcely comparable to the previous games. Simply put, if they wanted to give us a campaign with this gameplay, it'd have been better to make it as a single-player tie-in game to Quake Champions, where the gameplay would've actually been a match for the IP, or just make a new IP entirely to introduce their new gameplay style, instead of taking an IP whose fans are expecting a particular style of game and tell them "hey sorry but this one's -completely- different" and just expect everyone to be totally fine with that.

That's what I'm getting at with the whole "devs shouldn't try to force players to play a game a particular way" thing. Like, it's fine when they're doing that for a new IP that's creating its own style like Overwatch did, and in turn pushing you to play in that new style. Likewise, someone who loves Boomer Shooters would be foolish to jump over the Gears of War to complain about the cover-shooting and regenerating health just because they want to try playing it the same way they would Doom 1/2/2016.

In that regard, the big difference with 2016/Eternal's case is that the devs made a game that fit the Boomer Shooter mold while still doing something new with 2016, then seemingly got upset when fans of the genre played it like they would any other Boomer Shooter. Instead of then doing the more sensible thing and going "well, we don't really wanna make Boomer Shooters, so let's make our next game a singleplayer take on Quake Champions/A Brand New IP instead!", they went "alright, so because we don't like Boomer Shooters, we're gonna make the next Doom a -totally different genre-!", and alienated a large portion of their fanbase in doing so.



One thing I do wanna point out is that, at least to me, weapon mods basically amount to each being different weapons, so from my perspective it comes across as less "I can use the Plasma Rifle to stun lock enemies, heat blast big groups of fodder, or detonate shields" and more "I can use the Microwave Ray to stun lock enemies", "I can use the Heat Vent to blast groups of fodder", and "I can use the Plasma Rifle to detonate shields". I feel like as far as that point goes we can probably just chalk it up as a different in how we each quantify that sort of thing.

Yeah, the Marauder is indeed pretty easy, but in that same regard he's pretty tedious to fight. In the entire campaign + first level of the DLC I can't even remember him ever being spawned alongside anything other than fodder besides the one time you fight two at once? And I think that's ultimately my problem with him: rather than find interesting ways to involve him in bigger fights, the devs only ever used him as a very lackluster "finale" for some areas that you fight in a completely formulaic way every time.

In that regard, I don't actually think that my lack of enjoyment of Eternal's gameplay loop is what makes it "bad" (or at least, imo, worse than all the other Doom games). Like you said, just because the loop isn't my style doesn't mean it's bad. I certainly have my contentions with it, but those are ultimately far smaller gripes than what really knocked the game down a few rungs for me: The encounter and enemy design.

AND IN THAT REGARD THERE'S A TL;DR AT THE BOTTOM BECAUSE WHOOWHEE THIS TURNED INTO A RANT, DIDN'T IT?

Boomer Shooters historically use an approach to enemy design where each different foe fits a particular niche. Doom 2 is a great example of this: Archviles are designed to restrict what rooms you can safely enter while also taking target priority due to how they revive lesser foes, Arachnotrons keep up constant pressure to force you into constant movement, Mancubi fire in a staggered pattern where you'll run into the off-angled blast if you overstep your dodge, Zombies force you to have quicker reflexes than you'd normally need to avoid taking hitscan attacks, Cacos act as long-range, erratically-positioned extra pressue, Revenants require you to pay extra attention to the map geometry to ensure their missiles get caught on something, etc.

By comparison, Doom Eternal has way more enemies than Doom 2, but so many of them fill -exactly- the same roles as one another. Realistically, what's the meaningful difference in gameplay approach between the Hell Knight, the Hell Knight With Swords™, and the Whiplash? Why are Cacos & Pains, the only two enemies that could be spawned out over open air where they could act as long-distance artillery, only ever used for that purpose during the piddly outside-of-an-arena combat moments, then when you actually enter arenas they're just spawned deadass in the middle of the room where they promptly just start biting/punching at you? Realistically, what's the difference in behaviours between Imps and Gargoyles, or Soldiers and Super Zombies?

Enemies like Revs and Hunters were supposed to have threatening homing missiles, but they just end up being a non-factor because a single dash (and you're -constantly- dashing) causes them to miss. Lost Souls basically aren't an enemy outside of a couple of Secret Challenges, because Pains are they only way they spawn, and they orbit around the Pain before being fired as a one-off missile instead of actually acting independently. Why, for the love of god, is every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemy spawned around the middle of the room? Serious Sam 4 is out here spawning the enemies that fire homing shots up in castle battlements, spawning the flying guys in the distance so that they pepper you with shots from afar while you fight other enemies, slowly closing in to slam you with dive bomb attacks if you didn't strategize a means of dividing your attention between the near and far opponents, having charging enemies that actually -stay a threat- instead of taking extended breaks where they're so completely vulnerable it's laughable, and etc and so on. Meanwhile, nearly every Doom Eternal fight is the exact same, monotonous "enter 2-floor square/circular room. 10 fodders, 2 heavies, and possibly 1 superheavy spawn. When one of the heavies dies, spawn another heavy until quota is reached. Spawn fodder indefinitely because we wanted to remove ourselves from Boomer Shooter resource management as far as physically possible with our incredibly forced chainsaw mechanic".

The Slayer Gates were seemingly the -only- areas in the entire game where the devs put actual thought into wave order, spawn location, and etc. Meanwhile, all of the main level stuff felt completely cookie cutter, due in combination to the incredibly lazy spawn locations, and the samey enemies resulting in encounters that have completely different types spawning still feel like nigh-identical fights.

I learned with time & with getting full access to my arsenal that the gameplay loop has merit even though I personally don't like it and don't think it belongs in a Doom title, and was getting some solid enjoyment out of it around the late midgame, but by the endgame everything was so repetitive that it wasn't even -challenging- anymore (played on UV, as a note). I played the two Master Levels I have access to right on the heels of beating the Icon of Sin (not in the mood to drop $5 for the third) and they were downright -boring- with how formulaic the fights had grown. It was just dodge dodge dodge, fire some rockets at the big guy or a freeze/chaingun combo at the bigger guy, chainsaw an imp or two, repeat until arena over, and not even the DLC has managed to assuage that feeling of just doing the same thing repeatedly thus far.

TL;DR: it's not the combat loop that has Eternal sitting at the bottom of my theoretical "Doom Tier List". That just has it on my "Should've been another IP so as to not alienate fans expecting a proper Doom-style sequel" list. It's the sheer laziness of the enemy and arena design. Samey arenas filled with samey enemies that are spawned in samey locations simply lacks the variation of challenge provided by classic Boomer Shooter map & enemy design. Rather than put me in a massive variety of combat situations to repeatedly change things up and throw me off for additional challenge, Doom Eternal basically just goes "hey, how good at this one thing are you yet? are you better at it now? how about now? how about now? how about now? how about now?", and no matter how much I scream at my monitor "YES DOOM ETERNAL, I'M ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD AT THIS NOW, DO YOU THINK WE COULD CHANGE IT UP A BIT SO THAT I'M ACTUALLY BEING CHALLENGED AGAIN?" it just keeps going "how about now? how about now? how about now?" like a broken record.

So anyways thanks for coming to my Ted Talk/Informally-Formatted Doom Eternal review. I give the game a flat 7. And before anyone tries to argue that that's a high score given my opinions on it, I'll note that I score on a standardized-test-esque grading scale. E.g., 7/10 is a C-, Slightly Below Average, where pretty much the entire rest of the Doom series is sitting comfy at 9 or 10/10s, which are some degree of Very Above Average or Practically No Issues, respectively.

So yeah, sorry that I'm just dumping a massive wall of text on you, I had dental work done today and the meds they used have me too loopy to actually play games right now, so I decided to burn time writing this essay instead. I hope, even if we remain in disagreement, that it was at the very least informative as to how some of us feel over here on the other side of the pond.

This is very well written. I think we can agree to disagree.

I agree with some of the stuff in here. Like the point about Marauder being placed with fodder demons.

There is probably one time I can think of where this wasn't the case, which is The Holt, and I think they spawn a Marauder with a Tyrant. I agree with you in that sometimes it's a little boring how they just use him as the challenge, instead of pairing him with other demons. But luckily that seems to be changing.

Also that bit about the game asking you "How about now?", I personally really like. It makes encounters interesting. Like the double tyrant and doom hunter fight in The Holt and the SGN Master Level

This forum is attracting my highest interest.
Most likely, agreeing to disagree to a certain degree is an interesting fact.
But since a degree has a limit that can be circled, I can take the freedom to disagree once more with the person using the words " Bioshock Infinite" in this forum.

It does break my heart to see a beautiful and melancholic game like Bioshock infinite being used as an example in a Doom Eternal forum which content is out of boundaries compared to Bioshock Infinite.

[Grampire]

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

I agree with you here to a degree, but I still have some contentions in that regard, that boil down to Doom Eternal being part of a series, rather than a purely standalone game like Overwatch.

That is to say, once a game series has established its overall formula, it's generally expected that, regardless of what new stuff you try out with each succeeding title, the formula is still recognizable and familiar underneath. You can see this with stuff like the 3D Mario games or the Hyrule Warriors spinoffs of the Zelda games. Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy all try out some -radically- different things, yet each game still feels like a direct sequel with gameplay that you can pretty much instantly recognize if you've played another game in the series. Hyrule Warriors likewise diverges a great deal from the main series Dynasty Warriors formula, yet is still totally recognizable as ultimately being a DW game in spite of those differences.

Meanwhile, Doom Eternal strays so far from classic "Boomer Shooter" design conventions that it basically isn't even in the same genre as the entire rest of the series anymore (discounting the very broad genre of "FPS", of course). It feels more like taking the design conventions of multiplayer-only Arena Shooters like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament, and giving them a properly fleshed-out campaign instead of the generic "just play bot matches with cutscenes in-between" setup the genre normally gravitates towards.

Mind you I'm not saying that's a -bad- thing, but it's definitely jarring when you take an established IP and turn it so utterly on its head that the gameplay is scarcely comparable to the previous games. Simply put, if they wanted to give us a campaign with this gameplay, it'd have been better to make it as a single-player tie-in game to Quake Champions, where the gameplay would've actually been a match for the IP, or just make a new IP entirely to introduce their new gameplay style, instead of taking an IP whose fans are expecting a particular style of game and tell them "hey sorry but this one's -completely- different" and just expect everyone to be totally fine with that.

That's what I'm getting at with the whole "devs shouldn't try to force players to play a game a particular way" thing. Like, it's fine when they're doing that for a new IP that's creating its own style like Overwatch did, and in turn pushing you to play in that new style. Likewise, someone who loves Boomer Shooters would be foolish to jump over the Gears of War to complain about the cover-shooting and regenerating health just because they want to try playing it the same way they would Doom 1/2/2016.

In that regard, the big difference with 2016/Eternal's case is that the devs made a game that fit the Boomer Shooter mold while still doing something new with 2016, then seemingly got upset when fans of the genre played it like they would any other Boomer Shooter. Instead of then doing the more sensible thing and going "well, we don't really wanna make Boomer Shooters, so let's make our next game a singleplayer take on Quake Champions/A Brand New IP instead!", they went "alright, so because we don't like Boomer Shooters, we're gonna make the next Doom a -totally different genre-!", and alienated a large portion of their fanbase in doing so.

So I read your whole post, and just want to say thanks for taking the time to share your complete thoughts. I feel like you've done a better job of illustrating a opposing mindset than many others on this thread and that is helpful.

However, I largely have an opposite reaction to a lot of what you said. I think getting hung up on "what a boomer shooter should be" is the wrong approach. For me at least, the "boomer shooter" is a strange template to lay over the genre, as the classic Doom games and really similar clones of the time were a product of the tech and development techniques available. Several of the original developers have said this and really the actual assets of the original games support that.

So really determining whether a sequel to games that come from that era rely on us presuming what sort of iterations are acceptable while still being authentic to that heritage. IMO, that's an impossible and ultimately useless endeavor.

I think that template, "boomer shooter," shouldn't be used as template to limit what an FPS game should be. Especially when they're expected to be faithful emanations from figuratively prehistoric tech and developer skill. This is merely applying a mask of familiarity and expectation over ideas without really deciding whether they work or not.

And where our opinions diverge heavily: I think that even applies within an IP. Perhaps I'm being intentionally hyperbolic, but I don't see why Doom has to remain the same horizontal based shooter it's always been, and I don't see why it has to chase a familiar feeling to that heritage. I don't see why weapons and ammo can't work differently, I don't see why demons and encounters have to flow the same as they used to when, again, options for those variables were so utterly limited. I don't get why revamping all of this means you lose the right to call something "Doom."

When people say "this isn't Doom," my response as someone who's been playing Doom for almost 3 decades is "why do you get to decide that?" Why can't Doom change? Why can't it evolve and shed the "boomer shooter" skin? Speaking for myself, I want it to change. I don't want Doom to become irrelevant or stagnant and I want to see new ideas. It makes the new games fresh and it keeps the experience of the old games unique so I have a reason to continue going back to them.

In a way, you're not wrong I guess; you do have to buy into what id thinks the series should become. That's going to be an offramp for some people sure. But that was always going to be the case, whether they cloned a previous title or went in a completely different direction. There was no way they were going to please everyone so they went with what they wanted to do. It's up to us to decide whether we appreciate that or not.

[Crippling Meme Addict]

Dont be mad guys, all these people liking doom 2016 but hating this one, just proves they are auto pilot players, not capable of thinking outside the box in anyway what so ever.
Just be glad you can enjoy something and grow, and experience new stuff instead of being gray like these losers.

[The Grin]

Nguyên văn bởi Crippling Meme Addict :^):

Dont be mad guys, all these people liking doom 2016 but hating this one, just proves they are auto pilot players, not capable of thinking outside the box in anyway what so ever.
Just be glad you can enjoy something and grow, and experience new stuff instead of being gray like these losers.

" Just be glad you can enjoy something and grow, and experience new stuff instead of being gray like these losers. "

My support goes to this sentence.

[arsenicBumpnip]

Nguyên văn bởi coolman552:

how do you guys write these without stopping and saying "damn maybe i should do something else"

in my defense, my 20-paragraph megapost ended with "i wish i wasn't so doped up on meds from my dentist appointment that i could focus on something other that writing this post"

Nguyên văn bởi Sierra-117:

This is very well written. I think we can agree to disagree.

I agree with some of the stuff in here. Like the point about Marauder being placed with fodder demons.

There is probably one time I can think of where this wasn't the case, which is The Holt, and I think they spawn a Marauder with a Tyrant. I agree with you in that sometimes it's a little boring how they just use him as the challenge, instead of pairing him with other demons. But luckily that seems to be changing.

Also that bit about the game asking you "How about now?", I personally really like. It makes encounters interesting. Like the double tyrant and doom hunter fight in The Holt and the SGN Master Level

Ah, The Holt is the one main level I haven't gotten around to playing yet, so I'm glad they seem to be shifting to trying to use him in more interesting ways.

I def get that many people will enjoy that "How about now?" element. Someone a few posts up mentioned how it's akin to the challenge of getting good in PvP for fighting games like Street Fighter, which is something that's never been for me, but I get why people enjoy it. Personally, I think it's a bit of a niche thing (I can't really think of anything besides PvP in fighting games, Doom Eternal, and maybe people who strive for SSS ranks in stuff like Devil May Cry as examples), whereas imo the "modern Boomer Shooter" style of Doom 2016 or the new Wolfenstein games has a much more broad appeal, which is I think where a lot of the dislike of this game stems from: Some people expected/wanted another more broadly-appealing game, and instead got something where the style the game pushes for has a much more niche target audience.

Nguyên văn bởi Grampire:

So I read your whole post, and just want to say thanks for taking the time to share your complete thoughts. I feel like you've done a better job of illustrating a opposing mindset than many others on this thread and that is helpful.

However, I largely have an opposite reaction to a lot of what you said. I think getting hung up on "what a boomer shooter should be" is the wrong approach. For me at least, the "boomer shooter" is a strange template to lay over the genre, as the classic Doom games and really similar clones of the time were a product of the tech and development techniques available. Several of the original developers have said this and really the actual assets of the original games support that.

So really determining whether a sequel to games that come from that era rely on us presuming what sort of iterations are acceptable while still being authentic to that heritage. IMO, that's an impossible and ultimately useless endeavor.

I think that template, "boomer shooter," shouldn't be used as template to limit what an FPS game should be. Especially when they're expected to be faithful emanations from figuratively prehistoric tech and developer skill. This is merely applying a mask of familiarity and expectation over ideas without really deciding whether they work or not.

No problem, just don't go on the steam forums shortly after dental surgery, or you too may find yourself so zonked out that you write 17 paragraphs about a game you didn't like!

Bear in mind, my main dislikes with Eternal stem from my parts about enemy/arena design, which imo are issues whether or not you factor the "i am upset this is a different genre" element into account. I don't think it's bad because it diverges so far from the series' original genre, I just think that's why a lot of people disliked it; because being a sequel that's part of X series that's been largely if not entirely Y genre forms an expectation that the sequel will also be Y genre, which Eternal distinctly wasn't.

I do get what you mean with how most games that are considered the most iconic boomer shooters were the products of tech that had some pretty hefty design restrictions, so I do wanna point out that I don't think modern games in the same genre need to restrict themselves in the same way. Serious Sam 4, the first Shadow Warrior reboot, and even the new Wolfensteins are great AAA examples, while Dusk, Amid Evil, and Ion Fury are all solid indies that show you can make a "modern" Boomer Shooter that remains recognizably part of the genre while still doing new things with it. IMO, Doom 2016 is obviously another great example in that regard. It still plays -very- differently from the classic stuff, but had enough of the DNA there that it felt like the same genre at the end of the day.

Basically tldr, I also don't think being a "boomer shooter" should limit a game's design potential, I just think it's a baseline set of general design ideas to build on, where you still have a lot of room to make your game unique, but by building it off that baseline you've still made something that's recognizably part of a subgenre. That way, potential players can look at it and see "ah, this is game is akin to those other games I like, so I'll give it a shot!". See also Nioh, which is -radically- different from Dark Souls with its combat but still recognizably a soulslike, or Tekken/Street Fighter/Blazblue/Mortal Kombat, which are all -wildly- different takes on 2D fighting games.

And where our opinions diverge heavily: I think that even applies within an IP. Perhaps I'm being intentionally hyperbolic, but I don't see why Doom has to remain the same horizontal based shooter it's always been, and I don't see why it has to chase a familiar feeling to that heritage. I don't see why weapons and ammo can't work differently, I don't see why demons and encounters have to flow the same as they used to when, again, options for those variables were so utterly limited. I don't get why revamping all of this means you lose the right to call something "Doom."

When people say "this isn't Doom," my response as someone who's been playing Doom for almost 3 decades is "why do you get to decide that?" Why can't Doom change? Why can't it evolve and shed the "boomer shooter" skin? Speaking for myself, I want it to change. I don't want Doom to become irrelevant or stagnant and I want to see new ideas. It makes the new games fresh and it keeps the experience of the old games unique so I have a reason to continue going back to them.

In a way, you're not wrong I guess; you do have to buy into what id thinks the series should become. That's going to be an offramp for some people sure. But that was always going to be the case, whether they cloned a previous title or went in a completely different direction. There was no way they were going to please everyone so they went with what they wanted to do. It's up to us to decide whether we appreciate that or not.

In a way, I -also- don't think Doom needs to stay true to the classic design conventions, I just think it's important to bear the fandom expectation of familiarity for a series in mind, and how breaking that expectation too hard is going to alienate a lot of people (unless you're making a spinoff ala Gears Tactics or etc). Like, imagine if Street Fighter 6 and every mainline game in the series thereafter was a character action game ala Devil May Cry or Bayonetta instead of a 2D Fighter. It may still be genre-adjacent, and may well be a really good CA game, and I'm sure it'll have plenty of both new and OG Streets fans enjoying it as a result, but even if it's downright the best CA game ever made you're -still- going to have a bunch of -very- upset series veterans who are now very mad that their favorite 2D fighting game series basically just died in a car crash.

That's basically what I feel like is happening with Eternal: assuming the next Doom game sticks to the same style (I could, theoretically, also see Doom becoming a "testing ground" series where every game is a radically different kind of FPS than the previous one), it basically feels like a completely different series to me at that point, and one I'll likely no longer be interested in playing unless they majorly improve on the gripes I had with Eternal (that is, the enemy/wave/arena design stuff, not the "i am sad this isn't a boomer shooter" stuff). It's the same reason I dropped Quake like a rock after 2: I played that series for its boomer shooter campaigns, not the arena shooter multiplayer or whatever the hell Quake 4 was, and I'm still sad that the series shifted so much rather than iD deciding to make a new IP to be their "multiplayer-only arena shooter" franchise (which is, again, what I think they should've done with Eternal [that or have it be a Quake Champions campaign tie-in game], rather than making it a Doom sequel).

Though mind you, at the very least, if the next Doom game sticks to Eternal's style, I don't think we'll see anywhere -near- the amount of threads like this one, as fans of the old style will have moved on at that point.

Nguyên văn bởi Crippling Meme Addict :^):

Dont be mad guys, all these people liking doom 2016 but hating this one, just proves they are auto pilot players, not capable of thinking outside the box in anyway what so ever.
Just be glad you can enjoy something and grow, and experience new stuff instead of being gray like these losers.

Finally, I feel personally hatecrimed? What's wrong with being gray-colored?

[arsenicBumpnip]

Also man, just discovered via The Holt's slayer gates that extra lives aren't restored on a checkpoint reload. What the hell kind of backwards logic is "well, you nearly beat it with two extra lives but then you died, so we're gonna need you to beat it with zero"?

[Jim Lahey]

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Also man, just discovered via The Holt's slayer gates that extra lives aren't restored on a checkpoint reload. What the hell kind of backwards logic is "well, you nearly beat it with two extra lives but then you died, so we're gonna need you to beat it with zero"?

Reminds me of classic doom where when you died you restarted the level with only the pistol. In a sense of irony I find it amusing that they accidentally pulled that off.

[FB_Destroyer_Rebecca]

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Nguyên văn bởi coolman552:

how do you guys write these without stopping and saying "damn maybe i should do something else"

in my defense, my 20-paragraph megapost ended with "i wish i wasn't so doped up on meds from my dentist appointment that i could focus on something other that writing this post"

Nguyên văn bởi Sierra-117:

This is very well written. I think we can agree to disagree.

I agree with some of the stuff in here. Like the point about Marauder being placed with fodder demons.

There is probably one time I can think of where this wasn't the case, which is The Holt, and I think they spawn a Marauder with a Tyrant. I agree with you in that sometimes it's a little boring how they just use him as the challenge, instead of pairing him with other demons. But luckily that seems to be changing.

Also that bit about the game asking you "How about now?", I personally really like. It makes encounters interesting. Like the double tyrant and doom hunter fight in The Holt and the SGN Master Level

Ah, The Holt is the one main level I haven't gotten around to playing yet, so I'm glad they seem to be shifting to trying to use him in more interesting ways.

I def get that many people will enjoy that "How about now?" element. Someone a few posts up mentioned how it's akin to the challenge of getting good in PvP for fighting games like Street Fighter, which is something that's never been for me, but I get why people enjoy it. Personally, I think it's a bit of a niche thing (I can't really think of anything besides PvP in fighting games, Doom Eternal, and maybe people who strive for SSS ranks in stuff like Devil May Cry as examples), whereas imo the "modern Boomer Shooter" style of Doom 2016 or the new Wolfenstein games has a much more broad appeal, which is I think where a lot of the dislike of this game stems from: Some people expected/wanted another more broadly-appealing game, and instead got something where the style the game pushes for has a much more niche target audience.

Nguyên văn bởi Grampire:

So I read your whole post, and just want to say thanks for taking the time to share your complete thoughts. I feel like you've done a better job of illustrating a opposing mindset than many others on this thread and that is helpful.

However, I largely have an opposite reaction to a lot of what you said. I think getting hung up on "what a boomer shooter should be" is the wrong approach. For me at least, the "boomer shooter" is a strange template to lay over the genre, as the classic Doom games and really similar clones of the time were a product of the tech and development techniques available. Several of the original developers have said this and really the actual assets of the original games support that.

So really determining whether a sequel to games that come from that era rely on us presuming what sort of iterations are acceptable while still being authentic to that heritage. IMO, that's an impossible and ultimately useless endeavor.

I think that template, "boomer shooter," shouldn't be used as template to limit what an FPS game should be. Especially when they're expected to be faithful emanations from figuratively prehistoric tech and developer skill. This is merely applying a mask of familiarity and expectation over ideas without really deciding whether they work or not.

No problem, just don't go on the steam forums shortly after dental surgery, or you too may find yourself so zonked out that you write 17 paragraphs about a game you didn't like!

Bear in mind, my main dislikes with Eternal stem from my parts about enemy/arena design, which imo are issues whether or not you factor the "i am upset this is a different genre" element into account. I don't think it's bad because it diverges so far from the series' original genre, I just think that's why a lot of people disliked it; because being a sequel that's part of X series that's been largely if not entirely Y genre forms an expectation that the sequel will also be Y genre, which Eternal distinctly wasn't.

I do get what you mean with how most games that are considered the most iconic boomer shooters were the products of tech that had some pretty hefty design restrictions, so I do wanna point out that I don't think modern games in the same genre need to restrict themselves in the same way. Serious Sam 4, the first Shadow Warrior reboot, and even the new Wolfensteins are great AAA examples, while Dusk, Amid Evil, and Ion Fury are all solid indies that show you can make a "modern" Boomer Shooter that remains recognizably part of the genre while still doing new things with it. IMO, Doom 2016 is obviously another great example in that regard. It still plays -very- differently from the classic stuff, but had enough of the DNA there that it felt like the same genre at the end of the day.

Basically tldr, I also don't think being a "boomer shooter" should limit a game's design potential, I just think it's a baseline set of general design ideas to build on, where you still have a lot of room to make your game unique, but by building it off that baseline you've still made something that's recognizably part of a subgenre. That way, potential players can look at it and see "ah, this is game is akin to those other games I like, so I'll give it a shot!". See also Nioh, which is -radically- different from Dark Souls with its combat but still recognizably a soulslike, or Tekken/Street Fighter/Blazblue/Mortal Kombat, which are all -wildly- different takes on 2D fighting games.

And where our opinions diverge heavily: I think that even applies within an IP. Perhaps I'm being intentionally hyperbolic, but I don't see why Doom has to remain the same horizontal based shooter it's always been, and I don't see why it has to chase a familiar feeling to that heritage. I don't see why weapons and ammo can't work differently, I don't see why demons and encounters have to flow the same as they used to when, again, options for those variables were so utterly limited. I don't get why revamping all of this means you lose the right to call something "Doom."

When people say "this isn't Doom," my response as someone who's been playing Doom for almost 3 decades is "why do you get to decide that?" Why can't Doom change? Why can't it evolve and shed the "boomer shooter" skin? Speaking for myself, I want it to change. I don't want Doom to become irrelevant or stagnant and I want to see new ideas. It makes the new games fresh and it keeps the experience of the old games unique so I have a reason to continue going back to them.

In a way, you're not wrong I guess; you do have to buy into what id thinks the series should become. That's going to be an offramp for some people sure. But that was always going to be the case, whether they cloned a previous title or went in a completely different direction. There was no way they were going to please everyone so they went with what they wanted to do. It's up to us to decide whether we appreciate that or not.

In a way, I -also- don't think Doom needs to stay true to the classic design conventions, I just think it's important to bear the fandom expectation of familiarity for a series in mind, and how breaking that expectation too hard is going to alienate a lot of people (unless you're making a spinoff ala Gears Tactics or etc). Like, imagine if Street Fighter 6 and every mainline game in the series thereafter was a character action game ala Devil May Cry or Bayonetta instead of a 2D Fighter. It may still be genre-adjacent, and may well be a really good CA game, and I'm sure it'll have plenty of both new and OG Streets fans enjoying it as a result, but even if it's downright the best CA game ever made you're -still- going to have a bunch of -very- upset series veterans who are now very mad that their favorite 2D fighting game series basically just died in a car crash.

That's basically what I feel like is happening with Eternal: assuming the next Doom game sticks to the same style (I could, theoretically, also see Doom becoming a "testing ground" series where every game is a radically different kind of FPS than the previous one), it basically feels like a completely different series to me at that point, and one I'll likely no longer be interested in playing unless they majorly improve on the gripes I had with Eternal (that is, the enemy/wave/arena design stuff, not the "i am sad this isn't a boomer shooter" stuff). It's the same reason I dropped Quake like a rock after 2: I played that series for its boomer shooter campaigns, not the arena shooter multiplayer or whatever the hell Quake 4 was, and I'm still sad that the series shifted so much rather than iD deciding to make a new IP to be their "multiplayer-only arena shooter" franchise (which is, again, what I think they should've done with Eternal [that or have it be a Quake Champions campaign tie-in game], rather than making it a Doom sequel).

Though mind you, at the very least, if the next Doom game sticks to Eternal's style, I don't think we'll see anywhere -near- the amount of threads like this one, as fans of the old style will have moved on at that point.

Nguyên văn bởi Crippling Meme Addict :^):

Dont be mad guys, all these people liking doom 2016 but hating this one, just proves they are auto pilot players, not capable of thinking outside the box in anyway what so ever.
Just be glad you can enjoy something and grow, and experience new stuff instead of being gray like these losers.

Finally, I feel personally hatecrimed? What's wrong with being gray-colored?

+1
My niece also had a tooth srugery some time ago. 2 of her wisdom teeth had to be removed.
Hope you doing well!
You got a great gift of putting down impressions about a game to text and explain it in a way that even rational narow minded people would have troubles to not comprehend it.
Keep that talent up!

[KLH]

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Boomer Shooters historically use an approach to enemy design where each different foe fits a particular niche. Doom 2 is a great example of this: Archviles are designed to restrict what rooms you can safely enter while also taking target priority due to how they revive lesser foes, Arachnotrons keep up constant pressure to force you into constant movement, Mancubi fire in a staggered pattern where you'll run into the off-angled blast if you overstep your dodge, Zombies force you to have quicker reflexes than you'd normally need to avoid taking hitscan attacks, Cacos act as long-range, erratically-positioned extra pressue, Revenants require you to pay extra attention to the map geometry to ensure their missiles get caught on something, etc.

By comparison, Doom Eternal has way more enemies than Doom 2, but so many of them fill -exactly- the same roles as one another. Realistically, what's the meaningful difference in gameplay approach between the Hell Knight, the Hell Knight With Swords™, and the Whiplash? Why are Cacos & Pains, the only two enemies that could be spawned out over open air where they could act as long-distance artillery, only ever used for that purpose during the piddly outside-of-an-arena combat moments, then when you actually enter arenas they're just spawned deadass in the middle of the room where they promptly just start biting/punching at you? Realistically, what's the difference in behaviours between Imps and Gargoyles, or Soldiers and Super Zombies?

Your criticism of DOOM Eternal's enemies is strange, given that the game's enemies also serve their own unique roles.

Let's take your first DOOM 2 example, the Archvile. You mention target priority - when an Archvile spawns in DOOM Eternal, is it not a very high / top priority? With how they can call in additional demons, including types that weren't previously in the arena, fights can get out of hand very quickly if you don't suppress and neutralize an Archvile shortly after it spawns (the right-side trial arena in the Blood Swamps being my favorite example due to its two time-staggered Archvile spawns).

How about the Arachnotron? There isn't another enemy in the game that really has the same level of sustained, withering automatic fire. Most other enemy projectile attacks are isolated or dealt with in bursts, but the Arachnotron cannon exerts -continuous pressure- unless you either take cover or destroy the cannon, meaning that it requires its own priority assessment. Its grenades also require special attention, since they can potentially bounce where you're not looking and still blow up next to you even if you sidestepped the original shot. Most other projectiles are a one-and-done deal after you perform the initial dodge.

The Mancubus does stagger its shots and -will- lead its shots into you if you're careless with your dash. Due to how fast its projectiles travel and how damaging they are, it represents a particular mid/long range threat, more so than the majority of other enemies in most situations. Until you hit its cannons, of course, again requiring its own priority assessment. Probably not a good idea to dash away from and forget about an intact Mancubus for very long. With sufficient attention, you can fairly easily dodge an Arachnotron's stream of shots, even at midrange, but a Mancubus cannon shot can be a nasty surprise.

Cacodemons are still extra pressure, like as you described as they were in DOOM 2, but instead more focused on close range instead of projectiles. I'm not aware of any enemy that is as much of a threat in melee range (150 damage in a single hit on Nightmare, I think, but it's never happened to me - I know it's 75 on Ultra-Violence from watching other peoples' playthroughs and from when I used to play on that difficulty). Pain Elementals seem to take more of the role of long range pressure, but in my experience are more erratic and less accurate than Mancubi.

The Revenants can (?) also be extra pressure from long range, with missile barrages that are more accurate than the Arachnotron's automatic fire. Best example would be the fight with the first outdoor Buff Totem in the Super Gore Nest Master Level, with several Revenants that can effectively harass you from an elevated ledge. That might be the only really good example though (Tier F enemy lmao)...

But since you mentioned map geometry, no enemy makes me constantly think about using map geometry to break line of sight / take cover more than the Blood Makyr. You can take cover from an Arachnotron, but you don't necessarily have to, since you can neutralize most of its threat with a single well-placed shot at nearly any time it's visible. Can't do that with the Blood Maykr. When it -does- become vulnerable during its devastating slowdown attacks (another unique feature), you may very well be too busy dealing with something else. I've found that using terrain masking is more important with this enemy in order to avoid severe damage.

What's the difference in approach between the Hell Knight, Dread Knight, and Whiplash? Hell Knights aren't much of a major threat - I personally feel that they're just a step above fodder - and can be approached in almost any way, whether long range, midrange, or up-close-and-personal. Dread Knights? Well, let me just say I was quite surprised on my first playthrough at not only how damaging, how far-reaching, but also how fast its melee attacks were at close range. Best to stay far out of melee range. Whiplashes also have far-reaching melee attacks, but they're not that fast with them. Instead, they require special attention if they start positioning themselves at midrange due to their dangerous shockwave attack, which is one of the handful of projectiles that cannot merely be sidestepped and forgotten since it homes in perfectly until just before impact. In fact, I'd say that they're one of the highest-priority enemies in the game.

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Yeah, the Marauder is indeed pretty easy, but in that same regard he's pretty tedious to fight. In the entire campaign + first level of the DLC I can't even remember him ever being spawned alongside anything other than fodder besides the one time you fight two at once? And I think that's ultimately my problem with him: rather than find interesting ways to involve him in bigger fights, the devs only ever used him as a very lackluster "finale" for some areas that you fight in a completely formulaic way every time.

The Marauder is tedious? You can eliminate a solo Marauder in 5 seconds or less from time of his first attack, depending on weapon choice and spawn type.

I'm pretty sure the second Marauder fight in Taras Nabad can occur mixed with other heavy demons (Prowlers, Cacodemon, and Dread Knight), but I don't really play that level very often, so I might not remember the spawn conditions correctly.

Nevertheless, I agree that there is huge missed potential here. There are glimpses of it: The Holt has a fight featuring a Marauder mixed with a Tyrant, which I found to be a fun conclusion to that encounter. The Super Gore Nest Master Level features a Marauder solo at first, with Arachnotrons spawning in shortly after the fight starts. That was one of the most intense encounters I've experienced in the game. I would like to see Marauders mixed more frequently with other heavy / superheavy demons.

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Why, for the love of god, is every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemy spawned around the middle of the room?

If this was a literal statement, then it is factually incorrect. Enemies are spawned all over arenas, including at the edges.

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Serious Sam 4... [spawns] the flying guys in the distance so that they pepper you with shots from afar while you fight other enemies, slowly closing in to slam you with dive bomb attacks if you didn't strategize a means of dividing your attention between the near and far opponents

Cacodemons do this too, even if they spawn near the middle of the room.

Urdak also has a fight where Cacodemons spawn far out from the arena. I would like more of that, there is more missed potential here.

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Meanwhile, nearly every Doom Eternal fight is the exact same, monotonous "enter 2-floor square/circular room. 10 fodders, 2 heavies, and possibly 1 superheavy spawn. When one of the heavies dies, spawn another heavy until quota is reached. Spawn fodder indefinitely because we wanted to remove ourselves from Boomer Shooter resource management as far as physically possible with our incredibly forced chainsaw mechanic".

I can't say I agree, none of the arenas / combat encounters felt the same to me. Each arena required different pathfinding and platforming strategies to avoid damage (-really- important on Nightmare) and achieve better positioning for command of the battlefield.

With regards to enemy spawns, the differences between enemies that I described means that 3 Arachnotrons spawning in evokes an entirely different response than when a Blood Maykr shows up with a bunch of Prowlers and Carcasses, for example.

Enemy placement also matters for the optimal approach to any given fight. I'm reminded of the first arena after the Atlantica facility self-destruction, where a Tyrant spawns in the back nearly completely obstructed by cover. You could get harassed by overhead missile barrages or surprised by the energy blade shockwaves until you figure out where they're coming from. You can't even just shoot back at it like anything else because of the cover, especially if you're out in the middle of the arena dealing with other threats. An even better example might be the aforementioned two Archviles in the Blood Swamps.

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

by the endgame everything was so repetitive that it wasn't even -challenging- anymore (played on UV, as a note). I played the two Master Levels I have access to right on the heels of beating the Icon of Sin (not in the mood to drop $5 for the third) and they were downright -boring- with how formulaic the fights had grown.

If it didn't feel challenging, you should have turned up the difficulty. I'm gonna have to agree with Hugo Martin and Gmanlives on this, Nightmare is the best version of the game. Ultra Violence is far too easy for sustained play and allows for too many mistakes.

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

I agree with you here to a degree, but I still have some contentions in that regard, that boil down to Doom Eternal being part of a series, rather than a purely standalone game like Overwatch.

This is indeed a very valid point. I recently became aware that the promotion leading up to the game's release did in fact talk about what kind of changes were being made going forward from DOOM 2016. Not everyone will follow all of the promotional material - I certainly didn't - and will instead carry over the expectations from their previous experience of the series. I was pleasantly surprised at how much more I enjoyed DOOM Eternal overall compared to DOOM 2016, but I can definitely understand how the changes would put off others seeking a different experience. I don't know if spinning off the design of DOOM Eternal into a different franchise would be as satisfying to me, personally, but I also don't know how one might address the issue otherwise.

[Grampire]

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

In a way, I -also- don't think Doom needs to stay true to the classic design conventions, I just think it's important to bear the fandom expectation of familiarity for a series in mind, and how breaking that expectation too hard is going to alienate a lot of people (unless you're making a spinoff ala Gears Tactics or etc). Like, imagine if Street Fighter 6 and every mainline game in the series thereafter was a character action game ala Devil May Cry or Bayonetta instead of a 2D Fighter. It may still be genre-adjacent, and may well be a really good CA game, and I'm sure it'll have plenty of both new and OG Streets fans enjoying it as a result, but even if it's downright the best CA game ever made you're -still- going to have a bunch of -very- upset series veterans who are now very mad that their favorite 2D fighting game series basically just died in a car crash.

That's basically what I feel like is happening with Eternal: assuming the next Doom game sticks to the same style (I could, theoretically, also see Doom becoming a "testing ground" series where every game is a radically different kind of FPS than the previous one), it basically feels like a completely different series to me at that point, and one I'll likely no longer be interested in playing unless they majorly improve on the gripes I had with Eternal (that is, the enemy/wave/arena design stuff, not the "i am sad this isn't a boomer shooter" stuff). It's the same reason I dropped Quake like a rock after 2: I played that series for its boomer shooter campaigns, not the arena shooter multiplayer or whatever the hell Quake 4 was, and I'm still sad that the series shifted so much rather than iD deciding to make a new IP to be their "multiplayer-only arena shooter" franchise (which is, again, what I think they should've done with Eternal [that or have it be a Quake Champions campaign tie-in game], rather than making it a Doom sequel).

Though mind you, at the very least, if the next Doom game sticks to Eternal's style, I don't think we'll see anywhere -near- the amount of threads like this one, as fans of the old style will have moved on at that point.

While I think the Street Fighter analogy misses the mark a bit (Doom is still an SP FPS game after all) I understand that changing a formula is always going to be contentious for a fandom. It still really boils down to individual preference as to whether you want the IP to go new places or, more or less, rest on its name and the experience that's "supposed" to come with it. I personally like the fact that playing different Doom games offers different things, and I think it's not such a bad thing for fans to prefer one game to the other.

As for your final point about there being fewer threads, you may be right as 2016 was inundated with massive amounts of hate threads from OG purists, who basically wanted to caste 2016 as an abomination. Whether that's quantifiably more or less than Eternal's received, I can't say (and I'm not going to count them, lol!), but I do actually think that kind of feedback is healthy for the IP, especially if it remains popular despite the outcry (which seems to be the case). Despite what anyone thinks, I firmly believe introducing fresh ideas, especially when they're primarily in service of the gameplay, is key to this franchise.

I also just have to add that plenty of OG players love Eternal, myself included. Believing people will offramp solely because Eternal modifies the formula isn't a fair generalization; I can equally say despite the gnashing of teeth here that plenty of OG fans like Eternal and are invested in Doom's future just as much as its past.

Nguyên văn bởi KLH:

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Meanwhile, nearly every Doom Eternal fight is the exact same, monotonous "enter 2-floor square/circular room. 10 fodders, 2 heavies, and possibly 1 superheavy spawn. When one of the heavies dies, spawn another heavy until quota is reached. Spawn fodder indefinitely because we wanted to remove ourselves from Boomer Shooter resource management as far as physically possible with our incredibly forced chainsaw mechanic".

I can't say I agree, none of the arenas / combat encounters felt the same to me. Each arena required different pathfinding and platforming strategies to avoid damage (-really- important on Nightmare) and achieve better positioning for command of the battlefield.

With regards to enemy spawns, the differences between enemies that I described means that 3 Arachnotrons spawning in evokes an entirely different response than when a Blood Maykr shows up with a bunch of Prowlers and Carcasses, for example.

Enemy placement also matters for the optimal approach to any given fight. I'm reminded of the first arena after the Atlantica facility self-destruction, where a Tyrant spawns in the back nearly completely obstructed by cover. You could get harassed by overhead missile barrages or surprised by the energy blade shockwaves until you figure out where they're coming from. You can't even just shoot back at it like anything else because of the cover, especially if you're out in the middle of the arena dealing with other threats. An even better example might be the aforementioned two Archviles in the Blood Swamps.

I just have to echo this as well. The fights don't feel the same at all to me and the presence of different types of demons has a dramatic impact on how you approach that specific arena.

In this way Eternal offers a "Groundhog Day" effect, in which a big part of success rests in remembering the spawn and trigger order of demons and determining the best way to tackle that encounter. The largest part of its replay value is going back to an encounter that seemed impossible and breaking it down; determining a strategy for success, executing that strategy, and consistently mastering it, then potentially refining it further to become even more efficient( almost like an action-based equivalent to refactoring code.) People have compared this to fighting games or arcade score-based brawlers, and there is definitely a strong parallel in the underlying drive that makes Eternal's loop fun.

But no, I don't agree that fights feel the same. If anything, the variety they offer makes the experience more thrilling, and even more satisfying when you truly nail the encounters.

[arsenicBumpnip]

Nguyên văn bởi KLH:

-the part about enemy designs, clipped for brevity-

So first, thanks a ton for the response! I'll give you the Archvile, Arachnotron, and Mancubi all being well-designed for sure. It's not that I think -every- enemy design is lacking, but the ones that I found disappointing (particularly, the ones I listed, as well as a few others like the Teleporting Big Imps & Revenants) were used prominently enough from arena-to-arena that it stood out as an issue to me.

Revs in particular were a huge disappointment for me, because the whole "Dashing breaks missile locks" basically makes them a non-threat, as you're very nearly always dashing.

I'll def also give you the Blood Maykr. While I'm not normally a fan of "enemy you can't hurt until its weak spot opens up" enemies in this genre, I actually found that in this case it was a pretty interesting enemy!

Finally, part of my problem with the Hell Knight/Sword Knight/Whiplash probably stems from how all 3 die/enter Glory Kill Stun from a single Lock-On Burst from the rockets. In my experience they weren't often spawned with much else going on to distract me, so regardless of their differences in moveset, I'd deal with all of them in the same way.

Going back to the Blood Maykr bit tho, I actually finished the DLC last night, and will absolutely say that it improved on most of the issues I had with the main campaign. Most of the new enemies (-especially- the Spirits) required me to actually put way more thought into how I approached fights than the practically-formulaic setups I'd been falling into towards the end of the main game. Like, some fights in the DLC had theoretically very similar compositions to fights in the main game, with the sole change being "and now this guy has a Spirit", and it was actually a pleasant surprise to me how much that changed the feel of those fights. Even the turrets, who weren't as hugely impactful on my strategy like the Bloods & Spirits, still acted to essentially fill the niche opportunity that I felt the devs missed with Cacos/Pains by providing constant long-range pressure.

I think the only DLC enemy I was disappointed in was the final boss, due to how dinky most of his attacks were, and how the actual "final" encounter was just two Spirited enemies and a Blood Maykr instead of an actually unique foe. I'll admit that that encounter was an interesting & challenging setup to deal with, especially since whoever you killed first would keep respawning un-spirited afterwards, but it felt kinda anticlimactic that that was all the last battle was compared to the main campaign bosses.

The Marauder is tedious? You can eliminate a solo Marauder in 5 seconds or less from time of his first attack, depending on weapon choice and spawn type.

I'm pretty sure the second Marauder fight in Taras Nabad can occur mixed with other heavy demons (Prowlers, Cacodemon, and Dread Knight), but I don't really play that level very often, so I might not remember the spawn conditions correctly.

Nevertheless, I agree that there is huge missed potential here. There are glimpses of it: The Holt has a fight featuring a Marauder mixed with a Tyrant, which I found to be a fun conclusion to that encounter. The Super Gore Nest Master Level features a Marauder solo at first, with Arachnotrons spawning in shortly after the fight starts. That was one of the most intense encounters I've experienced in the game. I would like to see Marauders mixed more frequently with other heavy / superheavy demons.

I mean yeah that's exactly the problem imo. Because the campaign basically only ever spawned the Marauder with fodder outside of the Holt and that one time you fight two of him at once (can't recall the Taras Nabad fight you mentioned tbh), the fight feels pretty much the same every time, and it gets boring to repeat it over and over like that, even if it's a short encounter. The DLC fight where he's paired with the Tyrant is definitely a step in the right direction, and I also hope they use him in some more interesting setups in DLC 2.

Nguyên văn bởi arsenicBumpnip:

Why, for the love of god, is every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemy spawned around the middle of the room?

If this was a literal statement, then it is factually incorrect. Enemies are spawned all over arenas, including at the edges.

-there was also a bit about cacos after this that I clipped to keep the quote formatting a bit more neat-

I think this was more of an issue in the early/mid-game than the late game, but yeah it's not meant to be a completely literal thing. It stands out more as an issue for me even when they're spawning things nearer to the edges due to how most enemies tend to just gun straight for you once they spawn. IMO, It'd have been a huge benefit to the encounter design in this regard if they had some sort of system in place where they could program a specific spawn of an enemy to use different AI than normal. Like, to call back to the Serious Sam "guys who shoot homing missiles from castle battlements" example, said enemies normally gradually stomp towards you to try to get in melee range if they're spawned inside of the battlefield itself, but the ones that spawn up in the towers are specifically programmed to just stand still and chuck the homing shots.

I think Doom Eternal's encounter variety could greatly benefit from occasionally doing something similar, like Arachnotrons lobbing grenades down into the arena from up on a wall, or an Archvile who focuses on using his enemy spawning & fire-bursts-from-the-ground moves while being far enough away that you can't just cheese him with an up-close Freeze Grenade/Turret Chaingun combo, and my hyperbole is mainly expressing frustration at how the game basically never does anything like this, instead opting to basically always spawn enemies in-arena that then just chase you down unless they're a Pain or Carcass.

I can't say I agree, none of the arenas / combat encounters felt the same to me. Each arena required different pathfinding and platforming strategies to avoid damage (-really- important on Nightmare) and achieve better positioning for command of the battlefield.

With regards to enemy spawns, the differences between enemies that I described means that 3 Arachnotrons spawning in evokes an entirely different response than when a Blood Maykr shows up with a bunch of Prowlers and Carcasses, for example.

Enemy placement also matters for the optimal approach to any given fight. I'm reminded of the first arena after the Atlantica facility self-destruction, where a Tyrant spawns in the back nearly completely obstructed by cover. You could get harassed by overhead missile barrages or surprised by the energy blade shockwaves until you figure out where they're coming from. You can't even just shoot back at it like anything else because of the cover, especially if you're out in the middle of the arena dealing with other threats. An even better example might be the aforementioned two Archviles in the Blood Swamps.

I will note here that every example you used included something from the DLC, which as I said above I admit seriously improves on my encounter design issues I had with the main campaign.

If it didn't feel challenging, you should have turned up the difficulty. I'm gonna have to agree with Hugo Martin and Gmanlives on this, Nightmare is the best version of the game. Ultra Violence is far too easy for sustained play and allows for too many mistakes.

Fair, though I've never been a fan of difficulty options that just tweak stat numbers like damage & speed, and there's very much a risk that if I'd done so it'd have jumped from "not challenging enough" to "so challenging that I'm actually having less fun than before". I'd be much more inclined to up the difficulty if it meant more challenge through more interesting wave comps like in the original games than just "the same guys but they're harder to kill & hit harder".

also sorry @Grampire for not responding to your post this time, I just feel like I'd either be repeating stuff that's included in the above bits, or otherwise getting cyclical with what we've been exchanging up until this point. I will quickly say that I definitely agree that what people tend to find fun w/ Eternal's gameplay loop most definitely compares to fighting games and such!






I'll close out this post by saying that, now that I've finished the DLC, I think I'm starting to see Doom Eternal in much the same way I see stuff like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, or Half Life 2. Each of those games did something very new and groundbreaking for their respective genres at time of release (Mario being the first 3D platformer as long as you don't count Jumping Flash, Ocarina being one of the first big 3D adventure games, and Half Life 2 being one of the first "cinematic" FPS titles), and as a result many people tend to see them as "10/10 one of the best games of all time", but when you actually get down to criticizing them they all had -serious- issues. Mario had an utterly terrible camera & some particularly cryptic Power Stars, Zelda's dungeon's often had two braindead puzzles for every good one, & its combat balance completely disintegrated if you got the two-handed sword, and as far as I'm concerned Half Life 2 has some of the worst gunplay I've ever experienced in a major FPS title, and the only reason people regard that game so highly is its story, world, & characters.

The thing is, all of those games were that rough -because- they were trying something new, and game developers at the time didn't exactly have any experience or reference points for what would/wouldn't work in their new game besides "Well this worked in -other- genre so maybe it'll work here?" (a technique which led to things not working as often as it led to success). Still, because they were such fresh experiences, and still at the bare minimum decent-to-good in quality, they were able to ride the wow factor of being new well enough that people were/are still willing to completely ignore the rough stuff about them. And because they were each so successful, they were able to pave the way for either their sequels or other games in the genre to improve on the faults of the original, eventually leading to titles that, while not nearly as groundbreaking as their progenitors, are most certainly better games overall.

Basically, I think Doom Eternal is in the same boat; it's pretty much pioneering a new subgenre of shooter, and as a result the devs stumbled a bit with some rough spots & missed potential, but even in the DLC they're already showing how those issues can be improved upon if not outright fixed. My views on the main campaign are still very much in the "eh, 7/10" range, but the DLC alone has managed to show me that even if I didn't initially find that the new gameplay style was "for me", it has the potential to give me a lot of fun in spite of that once the devs have taken some time to further refine it & iron out its kinks.

[coolman552]

what no ♥♥♥♥♥ does to a mf

[Jim Lahey]

**THIS POST IS NOT FOR COOLMAN'S DUMB POST, IT IS FOR ARSENIC'S ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTING POST***

See, this is the kind of thing I have a lot of respect for. You actually give reasons and valid breakdowns of what you like and dislike instead of resorting to the dumb "HUR DUR! I DON'T LIKE THIS GAME IT'S A MARIO CLONE!" not going to specify names on that one, they stand out enough.

You took the time to actually elaborate and state reasonable and actual educated opinions instead of the other tripe that gets put on these forums where they just repeat them selves over and over with no actual knowledge of the game.

Thank you for a rational post on these forums.

And regarding your paragraph

"I'll close out this post by saying that, now that I've finished the DLC, I think I'm starting to see Doom Eternal in much the same way I see stuff like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, or Half Life 2. Each of those games did something very new and groundbreaking for their respective genres at time of release (Mario being the first 3D platformer as long as you don't count Jumping Flash, Ocarina being one of the first big 3D adventure games, and Half Life 2 being one of the first "cinematic" FPS titles), and as a result many people tend to see them as "10/10 one of the best games of all time", but when you actually get down to criticizing them they all had -serious- issues. Mario had an utterly terrible camera & some particularly cryptic Power Stars, Zelda's dungeon's often had two braindead puzzles for every good one, & its combat balance completely disintegrated if you got the two-handed sword, and as far as I'm concerned Half Life 2 has some of the worst gunplay I've ever experienced in a major FPS title, and the only reason people regard that game so highly is its story, world, & characters."

When we get down to it a lot of games fill out that meaning.

Even the original dooms had their fair share of major problems that were not fixed until the modding community got their hands on it.

[Tsar Platinum]

It's very interesting to see some actual thought provoking discussion on the Steam Forums of all places.