Doom 4 should have...

Retog said:

Duke Nukem 3d was not the next in the series, it was a spin-off.

Hahaha, no.

DASI-I said:

The doom series was very extreme and over the top, not very realistic. And if Doom 4 tries to be even more realistic than doom 3 then it will just be another Left 4 Dead game starring a Space Marine. The thing that made doom...well...DOOM was that the player explored environments and creatures that were NOT of this world, even exotic places like Rapture (from Bioshock) is too familiar.
Doom needs to be very abstract. After all, Hell is not of this world or even this realm.

That's just glorifying something that 20 years ago was considered technical limitations. And this might be shocking to you but a apocalyptic hellish invasion and a lone hero stopping it all is the most cliche scenario you can think of and not being realistic won't magically turn DOOM 4 into the most original game on the market.

DASI-I said:

The thing that made doom...well...DOOM was that the player explored environments and creatures that were NOT of this world, even exotic places like Rapture (from Bioshock) is too familiar.
Doom needs to be very abstract. After all, Hell is not of this world or even this realm.

Abstract is all fine and good. I think everybody wants hell to be very alien and unfamiliar. However if you want people to care and if you want them to notice that it's unfamiliar and strange, you have to preserve some constrast and show the player how the real-World every day doom universe is. You can't just throw the player into random crap and expect it to work like a masterpiece. The trick would be to either ease the player into it or shock him through a sudden change.

Thank you, DASI-I. That is what I am trying to say. The gameplay should be as close as possible too.

Shaviro said:

How would the graphics look? What's "better"?

I think we can all agree that we want the graphics to be of this era. This part of the argument is completely irrelevant.

Retog said:

I think we can all agree that we want the graphics to be of this era. This part of the argument is completely irrelevant.

It's extremely relevant. How are you going to balance realistic looking graphics with unrealistic content?

The gameplay is unrealistic but the graphics should look realistic. The only reason they didn't look realistic back in 93/94 was because of limitations.
To be honest, I don't care how the game looks, I only care how it plays. Since it is a video game, not a movie.

Retog said:

The gameplay is unrealistic but the graphics should look realistic. The only reason they didn't look realistic back in 93/94 was because of limitations.

But that makes no sense at all.
Graphics and gameplay aren't two deparate ingredients. Creating a video game is much more complex than that. Consistensy and context is everything when creating virtual experiences. Running 70mph didn't look out of place in Doom because the locales were vast and had a limited amount of details. You can't create a modern day graphical adventure with realistic graphics *without* highly detailed environments. Are these objects supposed to NOT clip? How do you suggest they make a setting that looks realistic but plays abstract?

To be honest, I don't care how the game looks, I only care how it plays. Since it is a video game, not a movie.

While there is a difference between a video game and a movie, they both heavily rely on visuals to illustrate and reinforce whatever the developer/write wants to convey. Ignoring this shows an extreme lack of insight in the development process. They are both part of the visual storytelling medium.

Shaviro said:

But that makes no sense at all.
Graphics and gameplay aren't two deparate ingredients. Creating a video game is much more complex than that. Consistensy and context is everything when creating virtual experiences. Running 70mph didn't look out of place in Doom because the locales were vast and had a limited amount of details. You can't create a modern day graphical adventure with realistic graphics *without* highly detailed environments. Are these objects supposed to NOT clip? How do you suggest they make a setting that looks realistic but plays abstract?

Look at Unreal 3. The graphics look good and it's very fast-paced.

Retog said:

Look at Unreal 3. The graphics look good and it's very fast-paced.

First off, the graphics in Unreal 3 are nowhere near able to pass off as modern day Graphics. Secondly you are showing examples from multiplayer game in which the context is not very important. Thirdly, the player movement is actually pretty slow compared to Doom.

Shaviro said:

First off, the graphics in Unreal 3 are nowhere near able to pass off as modern day Graphics. Secondly you are showing examples from multiplayer game in which the context is not very important. Thirdly, the player movement is actually pretty slow compared to Doom.

Unrealistic gameplay with realistic graphics can work easily but as I said before, I couldn't care less about the graphics.

Retog said:

Unrealistic gameplay with realistic graphics can work easily but as I said before, I couldn't care less about the graphics.

You repeating a statement has no impact on whether or not it's true. What you don't seem to grasp is that the graphics have a huge say in how the game plays, feels and is remembered. The - at that time - realistic graphics of Doom1 were a huge part of its initial success. Do you not care about the basic plot and setting of the game? Is the player to be dumped into a level and just shoot at whatever moves? Fuck the context?

Shaviro said:

Do you not care about the basic plot and setting of the game? Is the player to be dumped into a level and just shoot at whatever moves? Fuck the context?

As long as it's fun I don't care. I enjoy a lot of different atmospheres that games bring.
Think about it, Doom has never really had much of plot so why make a complex one now?
Doom is literally "here is a level, now shoot stuff".

Retog said:

As long as it's fun I don't care. I enjoy a lot of different atmospheres that games bring. Think about it, Doom has never really had much of plot so why make a complex one now?
Doom is literally "here is a level, now shoot stuff".

It doesn't need to be complex. I'd actually rather it wasn't. That said, don't underestimate the original Doom (1)'s plot or its influence. Contrary to most modern shooters, things actually happened in the original Doom. There were three distinct chapters with distinct themes. The moon of Deimos was swallowed by hell. You got to the second chapter by dying and going to hell. The game ended in a twist where Earth was invaded. While most of the original Doom bible was scrapped, its influence is strong throughout the game and there is a huge difference between what you're suggesting (random crap) and the end product.

An increase in overall fidelity also demands an increase in story detail. This doesn't mean we need to have lots of boring expository dialogue as seen in HL2. It's possible to show the story unfold through events taking place in the background, as also seen in HL2 (or even better something like the intro to The Last of Us). If you want to convey a hellish invasion, make the player care about the world and you'll have the effect increase tenfold. If everything in your game is essentially an excuse to shoot random monsters, this will bleed through and your game will suffer.

Shaviro said:

It doesn't need to be complex. I'd actually rather it wasn't. That said, don't underestimate the original Doom (1)'s plot or its influence. Contrary to most modern shooters, things actually happened in the original Doom. There were three distinct chapters with distinct themes. The moon of Deimos was swallowed by hell. You got to the second chapter by dying and going to hell. The game ended in a twist where Earth was invaded. While most of the original Doom bible was scrapped, its influence is strong throughout the game and there is a huge difference between what you're suggesting (random crap) and the end product.

An increase in overall fidelity also demands an increase in story detail. This doesn't mean we need to have lots of boring expository dialogue as seen in HL2. It's possible to show the story unfold through events taking place in the background, as also seen in HL2 (or even better something like the intro to The Last of Us). If you want to convey a hellish invasion, make the player care about the world and you'll have the effect increase tenfold. If everything in your game is essentially an excuse to shoot random monsters, this will bleed through and your game will suffer.

Yes I have played doom many times before. I know the progression of the plot. That clearly changed how the levels looked. It is similar in doom 2. You can see the textures change from when it goes to the city and then to hell. This is irrelevant drivel. We clearly aren't disagreeing on how the game should look, we are disagreeing on how the game should play.

Doom is a very arcade style game. It is fun. My point still stands. We want a DOOM game, not a rehashed cod clone!

It reminds me of countless situations when 'fans' tend to consider the earliest work of musicians to be the best and everything else, especially departing from the initial sound, is said to be a deterioration. People get too accustomed to the first thing they've heard and consider it the very core of the band while in reality it's just a part of a bigger picture.

DOOM (1/2) is a similiar thing. People delusionally glorify it, believing it's the only true DOOM and that whatever is in it, it's the ultimate set of features and characteristics. Any departure is considered a travesty. A lot of people consider DOOM 3 to be such a travesty because it's not a copy of the original game but the reality is that it shows that there's more id wants to do within the universe than people thought based on an old primitive game. And what exactly makes fans' vision of DOOM any more valid than id's own?

What I want to say is that it's perfectly fine for a game to evolve and change. Just because you couldn't tell a story and present the gameworld through anything else but shooting 20 years ago, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it now, when you've got the capabilities to do so. Old restrictions became features in the eyes of people. But the truth is, the key to crafting a new amazing installment of DOOM does not lie in sticking to those outdated boundries.

Id aims to remain focused on action core of the game. Will it be the same action like 20 years ago? No. Like Shaviro says, things need to evolve on multiple fronts. But then again, do those adjustments mean you can't preserve, more, amplify the intensity of a vicious battle with hellish demons and monsters? You can. It might be an equivalent, not a copy but you can do that. And that's what id should do.

If one is going to work on an immature assumption that it'll all be a boring, generic, super slow, cover based shooter just because it has different combat dynamics than the original game, well... It'd be much better to try and see the big picture.

Doom 3 wasn't even remotely like doom. Even if you want progression, doom 3 was a bad game. It just wasn't anything like doom. It was a huge disappointment. I enjoyed it (although the jump scares got predictable), I just wish it wasn't a doom game.

As I said, evolution and change is good for gaming but do it with another game! Don't completely change the game so it is nothing like the original and then slap 'Doom 3' on the front.

Games aren't always about telling stories, sometimes we want to play them just for fun. Doom is one of those fast, arcade fun games!

You are completely ignoring the point. You need to look from outside your perspective, just because you grew up on modern shooters instead of the originals doesn't mean they are better.

If they completely change the game it can go one of two ways. It will be a boring, modern cod clone shooter. Or it will be a fun game, but it won't be a doom game.

I extremely dislike when people say "They aren't as good as they used to be" or "All new music is crap compared to back in my day". I am not coming from that point of view. I am saying that Doom was fun when it created a perfect formula. Changing the way the formula is presented is perfectly fine but completely taking ingredients out changed the product. It changes the game. If you do that, it is no longer doom.

Retog said:

This is irrelevant drivel. We clearly aren't disagreeing on how the game should look, we are disagreeing on how the game should play.

And I'm saying the two are closely related.

Retog said:

Doom is a very arcade style game.

Where do you get the "arcade style" from? Doom excelled in 1993 by being the opposite of arcade. They went in the "realistic direction" by portraying a more detailed environment than ever before as well as abandoning the lives system and introducing "faux" reloading (shotgun, plasmagun). Virtual Cop is arcadish and in nature closer to cod than it is to Doom.

Retog said:

Games aren't always about telling stories, sometimes we want to play them just for fun.

I really don't think a new installment of the former AAA industry leading game is well suited for a casual game. That said, define fun. Being told stories and having fun, blasting hellspawn aren't mutually exclusive. Also you don't seem to understand the connection between visual representation and pacing, mood, action.

If they completely change the game it can go one of two ways. It will be a boring, modern cod clone shooter. Or it will be a fun game, but it won't be a doom game.

Yeah because a new installment has to be a carbon copy of the old to succeed.

I am saying that Doom was fun when it created a perfect formula.

It's not a perfect formula. It was a formula that worked very well back in 1993 and the extension of the formula worked even better in 1994. Time passes. Things change. Today it's an outdated formula that seriously needs new input in order to sustain a modern audience. That doesn't mean you have to trash everything "doom" and make a clone of other modern military shooters, but it means you have to find new ways to excite people.

Changing the way the formula is presented is perfectly fine but completely taking ingredients out changed the product. It changes the game. If you do that, it is no longer doom.

It will never be the Doom you want. If it did, they might as well not make another game. The point of a new installment in a series is to bring something new to the table. In a technology driven/reliant medium like video games, a crapload of things have changed since 1993 and there's a LOT of catching up to do.

The two aren't closely related. Any genre of game can have and setting and any plot. Doom is a very arcade style game. Yes it moved away from the arcade aspects of wolfenstein 3d, but doom is still very fast and a drop-in and out game with a level that goes from start to finish with no cutscenes and you get feedback in the form of 100% kills, items and secrets.

You've picked a couple of points and choose not to address all of them because you have no answer.
I am not going to argue anymore because we are getting nowhere. It is also pretty pointless since we have absolutely no influence on the outcome of the actual game.

Retog said:

The two aren't closely related. Any genre of game can have and setting and any plot.

What on earth are you talking about?
We're not talking about genres here, we're talking about the direct implications a game's visual representation has on virtually every other aspet of the game. Something you're not grasping at all.

Doom is a very arcade style game. Yes it moved away from the arcade aspects of wolfenstein 3d, but doom is still very fast and a drop-in and out game with a level that goes from start to finish with no cutscenes and you get feedback in the form of 100% kills, items and secrets.

It has leftovers from the arcade age, but it's so far away from arcade games that I suspect you weren't around to play any of them or know how they generally were.

You've picked a couple of points and choose not to address all of them because you have no answer.

What points am I not answering? I skipped some about Doom3 directed at Touchdown. I frankly don't care as that has no relation to my points. You on the other hand practially haven't answered any of mine. How are you going to balance the realistic graphics with the 70mph player, zig-zag monsters or abstract military bases? What's allowed to be changed for it to remain Doom? You say Graphics don't matter, then what about swimmable Water, jumping and crouching? How is that *not* going to change the formula away from Doom?

I am not going to argue anymore because we are getting nowhere. It is also pretty pointless since we have absolutely no influence on the outcome of the actual game.

We are getting nowhere because you're presenting us with a pipe dream and can't explain how it would work on reality.

Look, changing the formula is fine. I said removing ingredients is when it completely changes the game.

Unrealistic gameplay with realistic graphics will work. There is no reason why it wouldn't work. It may look stupid but it'll probably be fine. Wrack is a good (in progress) doom-style game, they're going for a shell-shaded cartoonish approach. That game is looking good.

So basically doom 4 should be like the quake games but with gameplay closer to doom and more realistic graphics. I don't see what could go wrong.

Shaviro said:

Where do you get the "arcade style" from? Doom excelled in 1993 by being the opposite of arcade. They went in the "realistic direction" by portraying a more detailed environment than ever before as well as abandoning the lives system and introducing "faux" reloading (shotgun, plasmagun). Virtual Cop is arcadish and in nature closer to cod than it is to Doom.

Doom was arcade-style in it's concept, and less so in it's execution. The manual of the game states that the game is a fast-paced slugathon where all you need is brains and a killer instinct, and each level even had a stat-screen where your kills and item collection were tallied up. Those things are very arcade-style, however, the game itself had a tendency to go far beyond that in terms of how it played. There was a lot of room for exploration and doing things in a different order every time you played, which was very un-like most arcade games, certainly the arcade games of that era.

To say Doom was an arcade-style game overall would be grossly inaccurate, however.

Retog said:

Doom 3 wasn't even remotely like doom. Even if you want progression, doom 3 was a bad game. It just wasn't anything like doom. It was a huge disappointment.

Any Doom game of today (or even ten years ago) will have vast differences between itself and the original, not just graphically, but in terms of mechanics. The ability to outrun any enemy by a vast distance played a key part in how the classic Doom games played, for instance, but trying to fit that into a modern Doom game would make it absurd and ridiculous.

Retog said:

Think about it, Doom has never really had much of plot so why make a complex one now?
Doom is literally "here is a level, now shoot stuff".

I'm just going to respond to this, since it's a pretty good representation of everything you've said.

If you want a Doom game that plays exactly like the original, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Games are more realistic now, and with that added realism comes a demand for game mechanics that are very different. As I said above, you couldn't make a realistic-looking shooter today where the player had the type of speed advantage over the enemies that he had in the original Doom; it would completely break the game. You brought up UE3 as a counter-example of this, but you're forgetting that EVERY character in UE3 moves at super speed. No one has a distinct advantage over another from that standpoint. The game world is presented as a hyper-kinetic, stylized adrenaline rush, and all the characters and weapons are representative of that. Doom is not, and has never been that kind of game. You can't have the player be a speed demon anymore. Secondly, the level design of the original Doom games greatly impacted the gameplay as well, and it was level design that was intended to show off the technical advantages and innovations of id Tech 1. The next Doom game will undoubtedly be crafted towards the technical advantages of id Tech 5 and next-gen tech, and the gameplay will be vastly different from the original because of that aspect alone. That extends to how enemies are placed in levels, how they attack and take cover, how the player has to move around to progress, etc. All of those things contributed greatly to how the classic Doom games played. The abstract environments of those games would look totally absurd today, and would also result in very strange gameplay.

In conclusion, what you're asking for simply isn't practical. Doom was a product of it's time, basically a zeitgeist of the games of the early 90's, but asking for the exact same Doom 20 years later shows that either a) you want the same game over and over, and aren't open to change and innovation, b) you really don't understand what made the classic Doom games work, or c) both a and b.

Games are more realistic now, but that doesn't mean they should be.

I am open to change. I am a visionary, not a reactionary. The thing is, this change should be a new game, not a doom game.

Doom was great and it would be so easy to make the same game with better graphics. It would just be so easy and there is nothing wrong with it. I don't understand why people are arguing. We all want another true doom game and it is very possible. So let's not predict what will happen but talk about what we want to happen.

I know everything I have said will probably not be in doom 4 but I'm just saying that it should be since we all want it.

Capitalism is the only problem. Without it, we would have a perfect doom 4. Capitalism needs to be abolished.

Retog said:

I know everything I have said will probably not be in doom 4 but I'm just saying that it should be since we all want it.

Speak for yourself. We don't 'all want' the same thing.

Retog said:

Capitalism is the only problem. Without it, we would have a perfect doom 4. Capitalism needs to be abolished.

This is priceless.

Retog said:

Look, changing the formula is fine. I said removing ingredients is when it completely changes the game.

Unrealistic gameplay with realistic graphics will work. There is no reason why it wouldn't work. It may look stupid but it'll probably be fine. Wrack is a good (in progress) doom-style game, they're going for a shell-shaded cartoonish approach. That game is looking good.

So basically doom 4 should be like the quake games but with gameplay closer to doom and more realistic graphics. I don't see what could go wrong.

Sigh...everything you say would look very weird in a modern Doom game

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1178309#post1178309

And to further prove my point

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP2IoVkmM3M

No, it would probably NOT look fine and Wrack is not really a 100% spiritual successor to Doom, even the devs admitted it.

A competent Doom remake looks like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kepueewP4CE

Yet even this has problems (like at 1:00), it looks so weird on a modern engine and NOT in a good way. It's not surreal or esoteric, just SHIT.

Retog said:

Doom 3 wasn't even remotely like doom.

In YOUR opinion. And quite obviously id software diagrees with you. And like I said before, what exactly makes your take on DOOM any more valid than id's? It is you who is constantly ignoring all the points made by me and others, we've already explained everything.

Retog said:

You are completely ignoring the point. You need to look from outside your perspective, just because you grew up on modern shooters instead of the originals doesn't mean they are better.

Pffftt haha, and how do you know that? I was born in 87 and I was there when DOOM came out. Hell, I've been playing games before Wolf3D. I think I have a pretty good perspective on the evolution of games.

Everything else... Sorry, it was fun but everything's been explained. Retog just won't get it even if we keep smashing the reality into him with a hammer.

EDIT: I don't know what the hell. I wrote a post and it ended up being incomplete. I tried to edit it but instead it was posted again.

Retog said:

Doom was great and it would be so easy to make the same game with better graphics.

Well for something that's so easy you sure have a hard time explaining how it would work. Nothing about Doom4 is easy. It's more or less the most difficult project id could possibly work on.

DooM_RO said:

Sigh...everything you say would look very weird in a modern Doom game

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1178309#post1178309

And to further prove my point

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP2IoVkmM3M

No, it would probably NOT look fine and Wrack is not really a 100% spiritual successor to Doom, even the devs admitted it.

A competent Doom remake looks like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kepueewP4CE

Yet even this has problems (like at 1:00), it looks so weird on a modern engine and NOT in a good way. It's not surreal or esoteric, just SHIT.

I enjoyed the doom 3 episode 1 remake. It was good. I don't think any of it looks weird. Doom in a modern engine would work perfectly. You're all just capitalists who care about the games sales rather than making something fun for the masses.

Retog said:

I enjoyed the doom 3 episode 1 remake. It was good. I don't think any of it looks weird. Doom in a modern engine would work perfectly. You're all just capitalists who care about the games sales rather than making something fun for the masses.

Nice trolling.

For your sake, I hope you're not serious.