dsm
Why don't I have a custom title by now?!
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JohnnyRancid said:
I'd be surprised if any of us agreed on why we don't like Doom 3 as much as Doom 1 or 2. Honestly I like Doom 3. A lot. Ive heard people complain that the gameplay was too repetitive, looking around at everything with the flash light, then when you see something, try to shoot it in the dark. I enjoyed that very much. Exploring dark though cramped areas left a lot of openness. There was a lot to explore, and if the maps were much bigger I wouldn't be able to get anywhere without making sure I checked every single corner. I think that was a pretty impressive feat to make such tiny cramped maps and still have an interesting atmosphere.
Wow, someone who feels something I feel about Doom 3! I'm impressed, and I agree. I liked Doom 3 because I felt the darkness made it special as opposed to all those bright cartoon shooters that were all around then. The atmosphere was dark and subtly evil in a way that reminded me about aspects of the classic Doom gameplay in ways the design of weapons and monsters could never do. Only this time, dark areas never pissed me off, because I actually had a goddamned ligth source that didn't run outta batteries.
Also agreed with more "heavy monsters"; Doom 3 didn't use the real toughest anywhere near enough and I felt it helped make the game a little more repetitive than I'd have liked.
Anyways, to business, your's truly has a batch of new suggestions and some things from my previous post that I've thought over a bit more carefully.
Previously on channel dsm:
- "Limp-loss". I said previously that I wouldn't want any, but I considered that perhaps it could be nice if you could blow a Zombie's head to pieces (D3 had headless zombies, you just couldn't "create" them yourself), but unlike D3 (and typical popular zombie rules), headshots don't do more damage vs body shots. Seems kinda stupid in D3 that there are zombies that are 'functional' despite missing their fucking head, and yet you can kill them faster by aiming at the head.
One of my concerns about traditional dismembering is that if I blow off an imp's leg, it would reduce it's agility/mobility and reduce its combat efficiency. Personally, I wouldn't like that because I remember Doom as a game where you could fill a monster with a lot of lead, and still they wouldn't get "tired" or worn down, but still go after you with no speed reduction whatsoever.
I also considered the possibility that the dissolving demon animation/effect could be improved, by making the demons "fall apart" and lose limbs in the process; I'm thinking watch the corpse blacken, whither, and then it dissolves a bit like it does in D3, but this time around, you see limbs and body parts fall off before they burn away entirely. Considering that D4 will be real hardware requiring and likely have more monsters than D3, I'm afraid we better prepare ourselves for another round of "disappearing corpses". But if the effect is really awesome, it could take away some of the annoyance at watching corpses disappear.
- NPCs/story. I thought I should mention that should id decide to have another central "human" villain head honcho, better not make him predictably so. Tim Willits claimed that it would improve the gameplay to have a straightforward villain.
I've no clue why he thinks/thought that as it is my experience that an interesting story doesn't have anything straightforward about it, and I've no clue why being attacked by a bunch of hostile aliens that turn out to be beings of pure evil isn't straightforward enough a motive to keep the player focused and interested enough that the story leaves room for unpredictable human characters. After all, Hell will always be the main villain, regardless which of the humans have chosen to betray all creation.
Well, if there is such a "Betruger" type of character, try to at least make him seem like an unlikely villain, i.e. acts nice, is popular right up until he reveals his true colours, yet not to the extent that he can immediately be classed as The Enemy by the more astute players, because he/she is "too nice to be for real").
Monsters and monster behavior:
Aside from more dynamic ai, there's a few things I'd specifically like improved over D3.
- Speed. Zombies in D3 are slow and laughably easy to deal with. I actually view them more as target practice rather than any viable threat. I personally prefer zombies to be weak (i.e. weapons are powerful enough to take them down quickly), simply because I'd like to maintain the Doom feel of mowing down zombies in droves with the weaker weapons. But suppose D4 tells us that the zombies gradually "evolve" - they start out slow and laughable, but some of them (i.e. "all of them" later in the game) have the ability to suddenly move in bursts of speed.
So you have a fatty zombie moving sluggishly and slowly towards you and you laugh your head off: "Hey slowby, looking for me?", while you take your sweet time pulling out your pistol. Suddenly, fatty lets out a snarl and rushes/flings himself at you with surprising speed and catch you with your panties down (and in a bunch).
Similarly with the Revenant. Personally, I could deal with the Archvile being slow, but the Rev, I was genuinely disappointed with (especially after having watched the 2003 trailer where it *fucking rushed at you*. All right, so it fires a bunch of homing rockets at you and moves slowly, but deliberately at you to instill (some) players with a bit of psychological warfare. Fine, but I'd still want to experience the D3 Revenant (now looking even more detailed and possibly a little scary this time?) fire its rockets, then suddenly emit a high-pitch scream (a la its original D2 sound) and then suddenly rush at you with great speed and punch you in the face, sending you flying/reeling backwards.
- Melee monsters. The pinky was pretty cool, except A) used too little in the game and B) was far too easy, namely because it would suddenly halt and roar in the middle of a charge as if to say: "I'm here, shoot me dammit!". The roaring would be cool (and scary) if it could roar without stopping. The Wraith is my least fave D3 monsters and I halfway expect it to be replaced by something new in D4, but should id decide to put it in anyway, I'd like its phasing in-and-out of reality to be smoother; instead of stopping each time it phases, it should continue moving forward, so as to give the impression that it rushes out of a hidden gate each time. The Wraith would also work better if it came from multiple directions.
- Infighting. Let's face it: infighting is cool because you get to kick up your legs and watch the bad guys tear each other apart. For D3, id apparently felt that it was time to try something new - nevermind the fact that this new idea wasn't terribly entertaining, because you don't have time to watch the fun, because one of the combatants is deliberately ignoring his assailant.
I wouldn't mind if *some* lesser monsters act like this, as long as there are other monsters that wouldn't think twice about hitting back even when their assailant is of "superior rank". The interesting part of this would be to find the right types of monsters to go up against the right types of opponents, as long as it's not too difficult or time consuming to figure out.
It would particularly be cool if the monster ai prevented the infighting monsters from just walking up next to each other and tear eachother apart (an imp would keep its distance from a Hell Knight and bombard it with fireballs to reduce the risk of it getting wacked too quickly, while the Knight would do its damnedst to get close and personal).
- Cacodemon/Pain Elemental. I'd like to see the D3 Caco back in Doom 4, but some of them have a "mutation" about them. These "special" Cacodemons will appear like typical Cacos, but then they will close their many eyes and a central, large eye will open up and glow (looking a good deal more like the classic Pain Elemental when it does). The Cacodemon will then proceed to spit out three Lost Souls (it teleports them in; its mouth acts as a gateway), but one at a time, so it will spit them out in rapid succession. When done, it has three Lost Soulies to harass the player with, so the Caco "converts" to its normal Cacodemon form and attacks the player with its usual energy orb attack, until the player wastes the three Souls, or until it feels like summoning more.
Level design
- Themes. I don't think I mentioned this in my previous post, but this is an aspect that's rather important. Doom 3 tended to be rather repetitive to look at, not because of its selection of textures (as there was a lot of texture variation), but because of its overall theme. Almost all of Doom 3 was essentially a Classic Doom E1 themed game and it got boring eventually, if not real quick. Hell had a little bit of classic E3 and there were a few scattered instances of minor classic E2 influences late in the game (fleshy growth, wall panels moving away to show lava and bones etc.).
Doom 3 was essentially a very well-done reinterpretation of Classic Doom E1, but it just doesn't give the classic Doom the justice it deserved, because the other themes were underplayed.
Classic Doom had three distinct visual themes:
E1: standard base, though with a few hints of hellish influences.
E2: Wacky funhouse with remnants of what was once a base, sprinkled with devilish, medieval-type dungeons and other oddities. Occasional skulls and fire.
E3: Brimstone, flesh and bones.
To put it simple: Doom 4 needs a bunch of distinct themes, so that the entire game doesn't feel like the same damned location. I suggest the following:
Wasteland.
City.
Industrial/base - the base theme needs to be a heck of a lot cleaner and look more like "desirable living/working quarters" as opposed to the Mars base which was cramped and generally unpleasant/depressing.
Hell (explored in greater depth and preferably not made into a bunch of castle dungeons and caves this time around).
Hell mixed with either of the previous themes.
That's all for now - I'll probably think up/remember more ideas later.
Zoost: that pic reminds me of one of the Doom 3 trailers in which there was a pre-rendered Hell Knight at the end. That HK looked very much like the art you posted, and it was awesome.
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08-04-08 10:46 
