Ola Björling:

They should preferrably read articles such as this one and get inspiration/ideas/whatever, but they should NOT do something "just because the fans seem to want it".

Certainly. That is the point of articles such as this...to give voice to the fans.

Definately! Who knows most about the game and why it became a success? The company needs their goals and visions but in order not to let too many down they should try and use fans' opinions and suggestions, too. Familiarity is important when doing a game based on old ones.

I'm hoping they've got enough new awesome ideas lined up that they won't have the time to listen to any outside input. They are in the project's starting phase though, so I guess this would be the time, if any. Doom has been given the most thorough retrospect of any game ever done, so there are bound to be some potentially useful insights on the ether.

Not like they did for Quake 3. id has been around a long time, and after the tons of input from all of us in Quake, Quake 2, and especially Quake 3, they know what we like and want.

Maybe to some extent. At least consider the views of their fans. However, the creativity of its game developers is going to make or break the game no matter who they listen to. I think John Carmack has thought this idea of a Doom3 game over for a long time, and isn't gonna go into it half assed. Personally, I think he should hook up with John Romero.

Hmm. I wouldn't. I would stick strictly to the canon of the DOOM franchise and very carefully add elements that add to the integrity of the series. It's all about capturing the old magic and presenting the same feeling and emotion of the original. Listening to everyone else just provides more noise to muddle the intense design process -- it will *not* be easy trying to make a game that captures the original essence of DOOM and the less distractions, the better.

Naturally. Unfortunately, most people when thinking about what a new Doom game should include, will come up with some pretty lame ideas. However, there are trains of thought which are pretty universal among Doomers, and that sort of stuff should definitely be considered. Like everyone desperately hopes that the new Doom game is as atmospheric, action-packed, and scary as the original, so id Software would do well to make sure that the game delivers on those points.

Ola Björling:

I want HELL. I trust Kenneth Scott and Adrian Carmack will give us plenty of that, while Kevin Cloud will probably do more modelling this time around.

DOOM3 will likely contain a number of military bases and the such. Hopefully, they will be realistic...and battered and mangled by the living hell that the player is to fight.

Beyond that, I want, expect, and demand a living Hell. A mass of jumbled terror and confusion. Huge, expansive planes of torment to run through and experience, intermingled with dense corridors. I would be happy to see Brandon James back at id Software to design levels of this calibre and intensity.

A balance must be reached, and maintained, between agoraphobia and claustrophobia. This applies to all levels...

More hell and witchcraft. Weird symbols. I want it dark and hellish and with textures to suit that. DOOM is a spacequest I guess, but the creatures are from hell and that is the only place we haven't really seen yet. I want to see some of the original textures in DOOM3, especially the marble ones and GSTONE. Those, to me, are DOOM.

Better parts of the original often had the feel of complete locations with insides and outsides and a high level of connectivity. You covered a lot of square feet while running through the original Doom maps so I hope the sense of scale remains large, while the flow is tight. I'm dying to see some haunted moon-bases with a complete layout and outlaying terrain, all falling into a nefarious apocalypse. Give me strange portals with scary surprises on the other side, and a gargantuan demon-lord fortress at the end with some new marbface textures and I'll get all mushy! I swear I'll implode if the occult elements are taken out.

A combination of midieval/weathered (a-la Krull) and futuristic/weathered textures (a-la Aliens 4). A sci-fi midieval motif.

Level design, that's tough. The style they had in Quake 2, I dig that. The design was always neat to run around in, even with no monsters.

Textures are really important. They need good textures, and no brown shit either. I would like to see a believable Hell, too. Like, when I go to Hell...I want to be scared. Fire and brimstone don't really get me all that scared, but nothingness and sudden surprises do...if you follow my meaning. A sound can be scary, too.

Well, first all the sections of the game need to be planned and it would be smart to have multiple texture sets, one for each section of the game. Level-design-wise, the original was just made up of wacky, disjointed maps that had no relevance to each other, no continuity. This time around it will be an excellent journey through maps that all fit together in a common theme, per section.

Let's say the first section of the game is your journey aboard a Space Cruiser on its way to the Phobos Moon and you are surrounded by your fellow Space Marines. During the trip to Phobos, the ship changes course and everyone (but you, somehow) is possessed and you have to blast your way through the ship all the way to the Command Deck, destroy the possessed captain, and take the ship to Phobos yourself. This entire section would have a texture set that is perfect for the construction of a ship. The second section would be the Phobos Base, which would have reworked versions of the original textures, plus a ton of new ones. The third section that takes place in Hell would have a texture set even more hellish than Quake3... etc.

The "futuristic base" theme is pretty tired after Doom, some of Quake, and most of Quake 2, but I have to bite the bullet and say that I hope that that motif pops up again in the new Doom game. I'd also like to see the Hell theme done well, and I hope they throw in some other cool stuff too. A problem which the idders will face while designing is that nowadays people wants levels which appear to have some purpose and function, not just a random grouping of rooms with some lifts and doors thrown in. Classic Doom levels don't have the problem of attempting to look realistic -- they are made to be fun and exciting, and not much else. Look at episode 3 of The Ultimate Doom -- it's supposed to be Hell, but there's still all sorts of techno and concrete structures, with not much that actually looks like the classical fire-and-brimstone vision of Hell. Will that sort of thing cut it in the new Doom game. Unforunately not. The new Doom game will have to include quasi-realistic structures and still remain fun and exciting, something which is an order of magnitude harder to do.