The new "Doom" game

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That's the reason why I call them hard to make, actually. Used to be that just one person, alone, could do ALL of that with it not taking a million years... even with the screwball, user-unfriendly tools that were available back then. Not anymore, really...

As a long time Doom player, Doom 4 seem to be looking good and i like how their influenced by brutal doom mod but I'm worried about the gameplay like the chainsaw animation and shotgun damage. Other than that, i'm glad that Doom is back for the next gen.

So, it has been confirmed that the game will indeed have mod tools.

They make those. I know my friends have a bunch of them on their 360, most of them involve zombies.

EVERYTHING seems to involve zombies these days.

Whatever happened to ninjas, pirates, or rampaging robots? I miss those guys. The zombies are dull by comparison.

^^Zombies in video games need to be more lethal. In the old George Romero films, a single zombie bite seals a character's fate. In most video games, zombies need overwhelming numerical superiority to even be considered a threat. At least in the first few Resident Evil games the zombies would actually BITE; nowadays they just swipe at the player repeatedly, doing piddling amounts of damage. The idea of zombies eating their victims seems to have been abandoned entirely.

Over the years, I've been working off-and-on on an FPS that follows all of the old Romero rules (and some of the new ones).

There's a very fine line between "these zombies aren't really a threat" and "the zombies will always win".

I'm leaning towards the latter and just seeing what happens, but with zombies being so slow, a lot of times it really is like the 1990 NotLD, where she just walks right past them.

The next time I feel like working on it, I'm going to try adding a few concepts from The Walking Dead (the awesome comic, not the TV show).

I think the ideal model would be the original "Dawn of the Dead". The tendency of modern games with zombies is to make them an infinite horde, to be mowed down with easily controllable automatic weapons (with virtually infinite ammo), or maybe just get one-hit-killed with a swung frying pan or electric guitar, as in Left 4 Dead 2. I suppose "The Last of Us" represents an alternate model, where ammunition is extremely scarce and stealth is key.

Has anyone seen this? It's so bad, it's hilarious.

^^Well...Uhh...It's better than those Double Dragon comics.

If it weren't for the "Doom" name attached to it, I'd probably think this is ANOTHER generic, overhyped, first person shooter that will be quickly forgotten a month after it is released. The gameplay looks nothing like a Doom game, and the only thing "iD-like" about this game is the multiplayer, which looks like a slower Quake 3 with some stuff added to appease modern "bro" gamers.

Doom is supposed to have intricate levels with sprawling, nonlinear layouts, hordes of challenging enemies, deathtraps, secrets, and environmental puzzles. It is NOT supposed to be a linear corridor shooter with miniscule amounts of enemies and non-interactive levels comprised entirely of eye candy.

This. Is. Amazing.

EXACTLY.

I get the same impressions from the footage of this upcoming game as I got from Doom 3.... and I dont count that as a Doom game at all.

In Doom and Doom 2, you could have SMALL rooms that might have 12-15 monsters in it, all of them going berserk all at the same time, and the player is expected to deal with them.... and this is a theme that repeats frequently. Monsters are EVERYWHERE, like cockroaches. There's no stupid dramatic buildup to a sudden encounter with a single Imp or Cacodemon, as instead there's probably like 10 of the things nearby at all times. The game doesnt have the need to entertain the player with stupid things like set-pieces (which games today are REALLY overusing the hell out of) or CGI scenes or quicktime crap or any of that, because the complicated-as-hell level design combined with the baddies that just... keep... coming... ensure that boredom is definitely staved off the whole time. There's always something happening. And the levels are designed around FUNCTION, which is a huge part of why those games work at all. Shooters in general these days tend to be designed around visuals and such instead, which is why they bore me so much. Or being designed around "realism". Imagine me adding the quotes there in a very sarcastic manner. You know, like all of those oh-so-realistic military shooters where your freaking GUNSHOT WOUNDS heal after sitting behind a wall for 5 seconds. Ugh. Either way though, realism bores me too. It's like, okay, we get it already. Current tech can produce some semblance of realism. Good. Great. NOW STOP OVERUSING IT. ARGH. And for the love of kittens, dont stick it into Doom of all things.

They will though, wont they... we'll be only able to carry 2 weapons or something, the character might get weighed down by some of them, the stupid "iron sights" thing is already there, which is bad enough, and so on.... sigh.

In the originals you ran through these crazy demented mazes, dodging a million fireballs (actually DODGING, instead of just hiding behind "cover"), fighting hordes of monsters all at once, monsters that didnt NEED to stealthily get the drop on you to be a threat (and which you couldnt just BOOM HEADSHOT to death; usually they take many hits, no matter what), and solving screwy puzzles with switches while of course finding secrets that may or may not be in totally nonsensical locations. And the player character himself wasnt just some random soldier who could get sniped to death in a single shot, he was practically super-powered himself, able to take multiple exploding fireballs to the face without going down. And he didnt need any silly automatic regen, either! I've always missed the mechanic of health kits... the whole idea is that attacks from enemies add up if you dont dodge them, creating difficulty over the course of the whole level instead of just seperate difficulties in each encounter. That though has been outright MISSING from SO many games for so long now, and it makes too many of them so much easier... I hate it.


And just.... uuuuugh. If I keep this up I'll be ranting for like 5 pages about this. Suffice it to say, I'm still not expecting much from this game.

Guys, it's been confirmed that there will be mod tools. I am sure, that whatever is wrong with the game, or "not Id like' will be fixed by modders. It's even been stated, that people have brought up the they want a more classic style multiplayer(no loadouts). If they are paying attention to fans like that, they probably will add that in as an option. I get the impression that they want to cater to old fans, as well as bring new people in. EVEN if they don't add a classic multiplayer mode, with mod tools adding that in, as well as increasing the speed will be easy fixes. I was skeptical at first like you guys, but after seeing the DOOM panel, I am pretty optimistic.

Mods are fine and all, but if you need mods in order for the game to become good.... well, I for one just avoid it. It doesnt stop a game from being kinda crappy to begin with. Particularly since SO VERY MANY mods end up being unbalanced/screwy/glitchy/nonsensical in alot of ways. They'd also take bloody forever to come out, and by the time they were numerous enough to matter.... frankly, I'd have forgotten the game exists anyway. The need for hyper-extensive art for new content will also very, very dramatically slow down the mod-making process (same for the stage design, due to graphical overload). And mods tend to take a long time to make to begin with, even for games with simple graphics.

The multiplayer I personally dont care about.

That bit though: Be prepared for... issues... if the multiplayer requires mods to be good. AKA, be ready for the possibility of a small playerbase, as far as that type of multiplayer goes (as opposed to whatever the "normal" multiplayer will be, as obviously it'd be a seperate population). By far the vast majority of PC gamers, for pretty much any game, do NOT use mods. They either A: dont care, B: dont want to, C: think it's risky (and sometimes, it is), D: dont understand them (even if it's user friendly as hell) or, very often, E: dont know they exist.

I know there's this bizarre myth (PARTICULARLY with Minecraft) that "oh EVERYONE knows mods, everyone uses them", but those people forget: They're seeing all these mod users on forums. Something like Minecraft? Mod-users are NOT the majority; I could quote giant piles of statistics and reasons here as to why I know this. The myth says otherwise, but yeah, the mod-users are the MINORITY. Partly because by far the vast majority of players dont go to forums or places that would even have mods. That's only the start of the reason though (seriously, I could explain this aspect for PAGES).


Either way.... if the game requires mods to be what it should be, then... yeah. I personally would just stay away, and I can see many die-hard fans of the originals (as in, those who care more about the actual gameplay than the graphics and such) staying away from it as well.

Um, there are mods for tons of games and steam now has steam workshop, making it easier to download and install mods. A lot of people who play games on the PC care about mods and customization. Also, you can hold all the weapons in single player, so making a mod where you can do it multiplayer would probably only take a week, if that. What's it matter if a game comes out and it's good, but modders make it better? Does it really matter, as long as the mod tools are available? I like to play half-life 2 coop with a friend using a mod and it doesn't bother me, or make me enjoy the game less because I have to use a mod. Console gamers and the ones that don't care about mods. A lot of PC games care about mods, but a lot of them aren't modders. That doesn't mean they don't care about mods. Also, I couldn't care less about there being a lot of players to play the multiplayer will. I have a handful of friends that I play online with and we all pretty much buy the same games to play. We download the same multiplayer mods to try out as well, so that's never an issue.

Oh, I never said the gamer in question had to be a modder in order to care about mods.

I mean, a huge number of NORMAL gamers dont care/know about/use/want-to-risk/whatever mods. Like I said: I'm not just guessing on this one. For every huge modding group you might see on Steam, the number of players of that game that DONT use any is DRAMATICALLY higher. That's the thing: Just because a game has a large modding community, or APPEARS to, doesnt mean that they're the majority of users. LOTS of players never touch the workshop, for all the reasons I already stated. And I dont mean they never make stuff for it, I mean they never even LOOK at it.

Alot of consumers simply want the product out of the box to be good, without having to go to any conceivable extra trouble. And you could argue "but they're so easy to use", but it just doesnt work that way. Even with Steam's workshop. Players get nervous about the content in there ("will it screw up my game?"), or maybe they dont understand it ("The game is already complicated enough!"), or maybe they dont want to browse it ("Ugh, I'm not reading through all that stuff on there just to find something actually good"), or so on. Or, again.... they simply dont care. It's the same with something huge like Minecraft; players might KNOW of mods, they might even watch others play with them... but that doesnt mean they want to USE them. I know a number of PC gamers that are like that in general. They'll enjoy watching me or someone else mess with mods in specific games, but use them themselves? Ye gods, no. There'd be LEARNING that needed to be done. And it might wreck their save file in whatever game it is. And their computer might explode. And blah blah blah blah blah.... you get the picture.

And really, tons of players just literally never even look at that stuff at all. Most communities create the ILLUSION that most players will look at those things. There's a concept I've always liked to illustrate this with... one thing that developers of any game has to deal with is negative comments, right? Often, when you go to the forums for a game, that forum might be FILLED with people yelling and whining... some games are better about this than others. It's most common with MMOs. When you see a forum like that, it can make you think "Wow, the whole playerbase is so awful!", but that is nothing but an illusion (in most cases; there ARE exceptions, and I can think of a few notable ones...). When you see it that way, you're not counting all of the OTHER players that are not appearing on there. Positive players may be completely pushed away by the negativity of said forum. Others with genuine problems might not go there because they'd be drowned out. Further ones with problems may not know the forum even exists; or if they do, are kinda computer illiterate and cannot get there on their own (yes, this DOES happen even within just Steam; yes, it's stupid, but it DOES happen). Players that have never had problems may never have had any reason to even LOOK for a forum, let alone use it. And others may not be familiar with even the concept of forums, even if they play PC games. Or.... like many on here.... they may not be social enough in certain situations to want to go to such a place, just like how many on this site dont like certain situations like parties or such. But more than anything, there's that huge contingent of players that buy the game, and use only what was "in the box", so to speak, never going to more trouble even if they have problems. ALOT of consumers are like this.

When all of that is considered, the negative players on said forum are actually many times in the minority.... but are so VOCAL that they appear to be the majority, because it LOOKS like they're appearing everywhere since the ones that are there never shut up, and tend to drown out the existence of anyone else. Minecraft's modding community is like that. They never shut the bloody hell up about it (both the modders and the users of mods), and Youtubers like to wave the mods around.... but the majority of the game's playerbase does not use mods, for too many reasons for me to list.


All of this is why I say that there's no guarantee for a modded population to be large enough for any specific game.

Understand, I've been dealing with mods and user-made whatevers and such for.... a very long time. A VERY long time. Waaaayyyyyyy longer than things like the Workshop have been around. This isnt something that I dont know much about.


Now, as for multiplayer, yes, you may not care if the playerbase is low... but others will. If I personally take an interest in the multiplayer of a given game, it *has* to have a large playerbase. Why? Because no friends of mine will give a flying fart about it. That's pretty much guaranteed; their tastes in games do NOT match mine. Alot of gamers just cant organize matches with friends, and need actual matchmaking to play multiplayer at all. Hell, even for Minecraft... I have to go looking on servers and such for groups to join if I wanna play multiplayer. None of my friends would join, so... it's the hard way, or no way at all. That's often how it is. Consider yourself lucky if you've got friends willing to join you in some of these games. That IS the best way to play.... any of them, really, after all.

The last bit though, I never said it was bad if a game comes out, is good, and mods make it better. That's what mods are meant to do. What I have a problem with is when a game comes out, ISNT good, and needs mods just to reach the level of "good". Which, frankly, is what I'm expecting with this game. That, to me, is not a worthy purchase. I may as well just go buy indie shooters instead, if I'm relying that much on user-made content (and this is usually what I indeed do).