What was Doom missing? Opinions here

Maybe it could have had some kind of highscore list. Well, since there's no score, but there is Time, Kills, Items and Secrets, it could have recorded those into the list.

A better Doom 2 end boss and Doom 2 city levels more closely resembling actual earth places would have been nice but there's nothing that bugs me as being missing.

Doom is under represented by floating monsters so maybe a floating boss would have ticked both boxes.

More attention to deathmatch, which, despite being fun, was clearly an afterthought. An actual, working fraglimit and a couple of official deathmatch levels would have been perfect.

I'd like a more dangerous Doom 1 final boss. The Spider Mastermind can be pretty deadly (especially at close range), but she's an in-fighting magnet because of her minigun.

It'd be nice to have a unique boss for Ep4 as well, but at that point, they were more focused on Quake 1 so expecting a new boss would be silly.

Makign the BFG a bit more streamlined would've been nice as well (like removing the line of sight mechanic) because getting the most cut of each blast requires that you know most not-obvious and somewhat-clunky mechanics.

I would have liked Ultimate Doom and Doom II to be a bit more different from each other. Doom II felt like an expansion pack for Doom. Maybe one or two more weapons and monsters. Especially more monsters in Ultimate Doom.

Proper boss for last Episode of Ultimate Doom.

Proper Bosses in Doom II and both episodes of Final Doom.

That's about it really. Nothing too big. Maybe a couple more interactive items like the barrels.

Maybe a power-up similar to the Quad damage from Quake.

Actually, now that I think of it. One thing I really would have liked would have been a proper point/scoring system and a lives system with in game hi-score board. Unlimited lives kinda takes away from the urgency to beat the levels while trying not to die.

Nomad said:

Everything that Tom Hall wanted to put in it :P

^This.

Monster variety.

Mooks and Mecha-Mooks

Grain of Salt said:

1. A robust, reliable melee weapon.

What's wrong with the chainsaw and fists?

If you had a melee weapon that was more effective against the more powerful monsters it would make the rest of the arsenal pretty redundant.

I think as far as melee weapons go, Doom with its fist, chainsaw, and berserk is adequate. If there was a berserk equivalent for the chainsaw, it'd be overpowered.

I wish Doom had a cleaner method to define additional switches and animated textures. The Boom SWITCHES and ANIMATED would have been acceptable. It would have made for less ugliness in certain resources. (Urgh, look at the textures in TNT. Just look at them.)

I wouldn't mind a knife or something that could kill an imp in two-four hits (depending on damage rolls), the damage gap between fists and berserk is bit too large for some situations. Plus the chainsaw is a poor choice against some monsters and too safe against others with its stun lock.

If you had a melee weapon that was more effective against the more powerful monsters it would make the rest of the arsenal pretty redundant.

Many games or even Doom mods show this isn't necessarily the case. Melee involves a much greater risk than range.

Pick Deus Vult 2 for a good example. You've got these gauntlets that are essentially a fast chainsaw, so fast it can take down a baron in seconds, and if you look at it in a vacuum you might think you're just going to be able to lock a monster in its pain state permanently; but that's the thing, a monster, ONE monster. When there's multiple foes around you, which is such a common situation in a Doom map it could be considered the baseline, you're exposing yourself to projectiles while going in melee, as well as being a sitting duck for whatever time it takes you to attack rather than staying in movement (as you can do if you shoot at range).

An express rifle, with semi-sniping properties and able to kill certain heavy enemies like Barons with two or three hits, thus covering the power gap between the SG/SSG and the RL. The downside to using it would be slow reloading (slower than the SSG), maybe recoil (throwing the player off balance) and scarce ammo.

Maes said:

An express rifle, with semi-sniping properties and able to kill certain heavy enemies like Barons with two or three hits, thus covering the power gap between the SG/SSG and the RL. The downside to using it would be slow reloading (slower than the SSG), maybe recoil (throwing the player off balance) and scarce ammo.

Not sure about that, but a new weapon that would fit between the pistol and shotgun wouldn't be too bad. Call it a super pistol (like the recent double barreled colt :P) and give it 60%-75% of shotgun's fire power. That way there would an other alternative to low power weaponry (in mid power you have ssg/rl/plasma, in low power there's only shotty; chaingun is in the between imo).

Gez said:

I wish Doom had a cleaner method to define additional switches and animated textures. The Boom SWITCHES and ANIMATED would have been acceptable. It would have made for less ugliness in certain resources. (Urgh, look at the textures in TNT. Just look at them.)

I think it's possible to hex-edit the Doom executable to define one more switch and one more animation, by filling in the blank entries at the end of those tables; thanks to Matt Fell's excellent guide for that info. I had hacked my Doom.exe once to do that, and it worked. Its only drawback was that it required those textures to exist in the WAD from then on.

The lack of invulnerability music ruined the game!

Speaking of music...variable tempo music according to the action/player damage?

printz said:

I think it's possible to hex-edit the Doom executable to define one more switch and one more animation, by filling in the blank entries at the end of those tables; thanks to Matt Fell's excellent guide for that info. I had hacked my Doom.exe once to do that, and it worked. Its only drawback was that it required those textures to exist in the WAD from then on.

This is NOT what I would ever call a "clean method". A rat carcass rotting away on a turd-drenched heap of marketplace refuse in a medieval city plagued by dysentery and syphilis would be cleaner than that.

I would have loved better modability à la ZDoom. The game itself was very balanced/polished for its time IMHO.

Gez said:

This is NOT what I would ever call a "clean method". A rat carcass rotting away on a turd-drenched heap of marketplace refuse in a medieval city plagued by dysentery and syphilis would be cleaner than that.

I wonder if that not-so clean method results in unstable execution...

printz said:

I wonder if that not-so clean method results in unstable execution...

It would surely lead to demo desynchs, eventually.

Are you positive? Can that desync demos? Why? Extra calls to P_Random, or game physics that depend on some data structures?

Unless we're speaking of "clean" demos that don't cause any memory overflows whatsoever and break absolutely no limits in the engine, then in theory nothing should go wrong. In theory.

In practice, most Doom games end up generating memory overflows of various kinds, that go and read (or write) garbage from precisely predictable memory areas. Any alteration to the executable results in alterations to what ends up in operating memory and, ultimately, to the code's behavior in overflow conditions.

A great deal of demo compatibility hacks in ports such as prBoom+ are exactly attempts to replicate this behavior, by guessing exactly the right kind of "garbage" that ends up being read or even written in memory. But for demos recorded with .DEH patches or altered vanilla .exes, all bets are off.

OK, so maybe if you alter one character from the exit message strings or add a character here and there maybe nothing will happen...or maybe it will. Nobody can give you a 100% guarantee in such cases.

Jodwin said:

I wouldn't mind a knife or something that could kill an imp in two-four hits (depending on damage rolls), the damage gap between fists and berserk is bit too large for some situations. Plus the chainsaw is a poor choice against some monsters and too safe against others with its stun lock.

Why a knife when you have a chainsaw?

Honestly, in retrospect I don't think Doom needed a single element added to it. Some better maps and music, maybe, but at its core the gameplay is incredibly tight and enjoyable.

However, there were definitely some things I wish had been added just for personal enjoyment:

-A grenade launcher.
-A railgun, or powerful rifle-style weapon.
-Tripmines/landmines - some more tactically varied weapons.
-More monsters! I honestly wish Doom II had at least made the Hell Knight something other than a Baron recolor, but I always like more variety in monsters no matter what.

The game could have done with one or two enemies at a tier between the Baron and the Spider Mastermind/Cyberdemon. Source ports have come up with some great substitutes, but the original games could have put in some interesting moments with them.
-Bosses! Doom II could have used some boss fights other than just tossing a Cyberdemon in here and there.

Basically, all I really wanted was more things to shoot, and more things to shoot them with. :P

Ubik said:

Honestly, in retrospect I don't think Doom needed a single element added to it.

What about a forum where people can discuss it? ;-)

Ubik said:

-More monsters! I honestly wish Doom II had at least made the Hell Knight something other than a Baron recolor, but I always like more variety in monsters no matter what.

Agreed. Or maybe not necessarily more, but replace the baron with something that actually adds to the game. The baron probably should have been tougher instead of weaker than the knight. A pair of chaingunners probably fill that role though.

qoncept said:

The baron probably should have been tougher instead of weaker than the knight.

I take it you go the two mixed up. The Baron of Hell is about twice as tough as the Hell Knight.

I would say it frustated me how they made to of the exact same monsters, only different colours, but made one tougher. So I believe they needed more monsters