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Doom 2 Tournament at QuakeCon

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I feel like people complaining about the overuse of the SSG didn't watch the VOD. The three maps I saw had huge amounts of BFG, and the SG features prominently on SSL. JKist3 basically won Judas with the BFG. Ask any serious dueler: if you use only the SSG you're going to lose a serious game.

Personally I think the 15 minute time limit, the 30 frag limit and the fast respawn pretty much ruined those games. It certainly factored prominently in D5M1 and Judas. I'm really grateful for Quakecon's decision to hold a Doom tournament, and I think Jehar is an OK announcer, but sometimes I wish that people who knew things about Doom would hold tournaments with reasonable settings and announce the games (like come on, JKist isn't "hiding" in the blue room, and the BFG will still kill your opponent and give you the frag after you died as long as you haven't respawned).

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Ladna said:

I feel like people complaining about the overuse of the SSG didn't watch the VOD.

d5m7 dev-ds was one of the most miserable shows of ssg boredom doom could ever provide without going full retard in shoot!.wad, including it was a much bigger mistake than what you mention. time limit was an absolute necessity anyways, sponge told us there would be no doom tourney without time limit. after watching the whole evening i understand why - there wouldn't be enough time to suck all those balls. and cup those other balls. and promote bawls. you get the idea.

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Yeah OK. I only saw the 3 JKist v. Dev maps; D5M7 is terminally boring I agree.

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First of all, I agree with Badboy - there is little point in tweaking the game to match current deathmatch standards. New players won't join anyway and old players may become discouraged. Each game came up in specific times, context etc. There is a reason people still adhere to those "original" (or close to orginal) principles.

Think about Quakeworld - by today's standards, maps like DM4 are AWFULLY unbalanced. Yet, nobody from the community wants them gone, it's part of the game's history and what made it good back in the day.

For those same reasons, even though Doom 2's deathmatch is dominated by SSG, I think it should stay that way. I just wonder what it looked like back in Doom 1 days with SSG out of the mix. Was there a dominant weapon there (SG? BFG?), or was the game more balanced? Or was it such a short span of time (only 1 year after all) and technical limitations were so vast that nobody really had conditions to fully test it?

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I wish there was Doom 2 tournaments in Australia even if they aren't related to QuakeCon, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen anytime soon.

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You can kind of argue that the SSG unbalances Doom. In Doom 1 DM (no SSG), the "one shot kill" doesn't really exist, and you get more mileage out of picking your opponent's health down with the SG & CG. Rocket damage is suddenly powerful (the SSG will out-damage the RL at even medium range) and the BFG becomes way more unstoppable than it is (because you can't really kill your opponent while the BFG's warming up anymore).

All that said, the SSG is amazing. It's pretty fast (reload isn't that bad... look at the Quake rail for example), has tons of ammo, can one shot your opponent even at medium range (or blind them with pain), and the spread is so wide that you don't have to have great aim to be effective.

The SSG makes Doom much more about prediction, movement and strategy than aim, which is ultimately why I think Doom 2 DM is superior to Quake DM. You can play a perfect Quake game in terms of strat and prediction, but if your opponent has a crazy LG you're going to lose, pure and simple. It also makes Doom 2 DM way more accessible.

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Ladna said:

The SSG makes Doom much more about prediction, movement and strategy than aim, which is ultimately why I think Doom 2 DM is superior to Quake DM. You can play a perfect Quake game in terms of strat and prediction, but if your opponent has a crazy LG you're going to lose, pure and simple. It also makes Doom 2 DM way more accessible.

I agree with the last sentence, doom2 DM is much easier to pick up and play. however I don't like comparing prediction/strat in Quake and Doom, because they both have their thing. you kinda neglected the main point of Quake gameplay - rocket control. once you start throwing the guy around with splash, he's your bitch. not to mention the prediction/strat options you have with rockets. I love Doom NS maps using freelook where you can emulate this sort of control.

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Yeah Quake does have things you can't easily do in Doom. A lot of the vert stuff isn't there (rocket jumping is everywhere in Quake), or more advanced physics stuff like the grenade launcher.

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Ladna said:

The SSG makes Doom much more about prediction, movement and strategy than aim, which is ultimately why I think Doom 2 DM is superior to Quake DM. You can play a perfect Quake game in terms of strat and prediction, but if your opponent has a crazy LG you're going to lose, pure and simple. It also makes Doom 2 DM way more accessible.


Let's assume that the above statement is true. I don't entirely agree with it, but there is some logic to it which I can't find a good way to counter right now.

SSG may "equalize" the game, but there is also the aspect of attractiveness. Quakecon folks who witnessed Doom 2 deathmatch for the very first time never blamed the game for its imbalance. The lack of attractiveness was the issue, and it resulted from one gun being more powerful than the others and that's how we arrived at the weapon balance debate, but while WEAPONS are unbalanced, the GAME itself is almost perfectly balanced with gameplay built around this one gun.

I'm not sure I'm making myself clear. What I'm trying to say is that people prefer less balanced gameplay in favor of more superficial variety.

But again, this doesn't mean anything should be changed about Doom. Those who want to join it will join it. Those who don't, certainly won't change their minds if some gameplay changes akin to Quake get introduced.

I'm just glad that Doom 2 got a chance on Quakecon after a 17 year long hiatus (because Doom 2 was last featured on Quakecon 1996).

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Patrol, I know where you're coming from, but while Doom certainly is SSG-centric, I assure you this massive prevalence of SSG usage was mostly caused by map choices for the pool. d5m7 is a dumb double barrel grind, in d5m1 it only ever gets broken with short bursts of BFG action, SSL2 is a fight for control over the two SSGs. Yet in the two judas games that were streamed you could glimpse how much more interesting weapon-wise the gameplay can be and sadly we've never seen a single round of king1, which is quite BFG-centric with some forced action with other weapons as well.

My point is, the game is actually quite flexible, but you have to provide maps properly exploiting these options. On the other hand if you just throw SSGs at spawns of a random layout, chances are it will play solid just because Doom works that way. The tourney could've been better, but it'd require much more research and tinkering and I don't blame sponge for playing it safe.

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Most high-level FPS play is boring though. Watch any rapha game, for example. This happens in "real" sports too; a lot of people like College Basketball, for example, because even though it's nowhere near as good as NBA play, it's more fun and "passionate".

I think it's important to distinguish "hey guys look at this cool game called Doom!" and "these players are the best at this". If the goal is to show off Doom to an audience that isn't familiar with it, slogging through D5M7, MAP01 and D5M1 probably isn't the way to do it. But if you're running a pro duel tourney, running through new school maps (rlight, chaindm, etc.) won't do either. I think to Quakecon's credit they erred on the side of pro tourney, but hopefully Doom-related events will expand to have a "fun" event and a "serious" event. Dunno though.

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dew said:

I don't blame sponge for playing it safe.

I'd rather blame the idiots who watched one match on a single map and decided that "DOOM is nothing but watching the SSG reload", when even in the d5m1 match there was, as you noted, a lot of BFG and rocket action as well. Selective blindness is a common disease of the snotty gamer geek who already has his mind made up about what games are the best and doesn't want any challenge to his perceptions, though.

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DOOM II via Odamex and as close to vanilla settings as possible - just the way it was at last year's Quakecon.

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Patrol1985 said:

DOOM II via Odamex and as close to vanilla settings as possible - just the way it was at last year's Quakecon.


could direct me to a topic about "vanilla settings", plz?

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