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DASI-I

Doom 4 should have...

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I've thought about gameplay elements that could work in a new Doom without feeling forced or "un-Doom." They include:

Alternate firing modes -- Adds versatility to weapons and prevents the game from having extra slots.

Weapon upgrades -- Remember how much fun it was to find the secret maps and upgrade the unmaker in Doom 64? Bring that back! Man-made weapons could perhaps be upgraded by finding a weapon depot and literally downloading new hardware to the weapon. No spending of money or solving puzzles; just explore the environments extensively.

Weapon carrying limit -- More than two, certainly, but not letting you carry EVERY single weapon could be an interesting strategy.

Monster weapons -- Brutal Doom lets you pick up manc cannons and rev missiles launchers. This is really cool and would add more depth to the weapons.

Vehicle sections -- These would essentially be rail sections, lasting a few minutes. Probably best not to give the player control of the vehicle. This can be fun in short, infrequent bursts, and you would utilize a weapon on the vehicle not found elsewhere.

NPC cooperation -- An update of Doom 3's sentry bots would be good. Marines that assist you in a few key parts could work as well. Having to protect a scientist so he can (for example) open a locked door by accessing a particular terminal could be interesting; if he is killed, you'll have to take a more difficult route.

Destructibility -- Even most modern games feature very limited destruction, so I'm not expecting much in this department. Duke style cracked/weak walls and small destructible objects would be satisfying. Large organic demonic structures with destructible parts (which must be destroyed to progress) would be interesting.

Portable device -- Doom 3's PDA could be replaced with a visor built into the helmet which displays armor, health, map, messages from your superiors, videos, etc. They would overlay your vision instead of taking you to an entirely different screen.

Sprinting -- Bring it back, but let the player run very, very fast (thanks to augmented boots) for limited spans of time.

Puzzles -- Doom 3 had you dumping toxic waste, accessing computers and navigating a moving platform. With enough refinement, these types of objectives could be as engrossing as switch/key hunting. Puzzles in hell environments would be interesting as well.

Non-linearity: Variety is key here. Make some levels very straight path oriented, while others are open-ended; still others could be linear but with a few branching areas. Perhaps some maps could have an alternate exit which dramatically alters the next several maps you play.

Story: Keep it ambiguous but interesting. No Doom 3 style characters lacking emotion. No blatantly transparent personalities, cartoonish bad guys and shitty dialogue. Some actual effort like you see in D3's UAC videos.

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GoatLord said:

NPC cooperation -- An update of Doom 3's sentry bots would be good. Marines that assist you in a few key parts could work as well.

There is a quite cool mod for Doom 3 that gives you these.

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DooM_RO said:

Would be cool if they worked like in Half Life.


In Half Life 1 maybe.

But hopefully not Half Life 2:

The combine NPC's can't hit shit, they can't kill one guy stood in front of them despite "Superior armor and training" but yet if you make them a squad in hammer, the results are team kill!

The civilians are WMD's in that game however and about 3 of them can rape a combine platoon.

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DooM_RO said:

I promise you will never get that game.

The best AAA oldschool shooter we can hope for at the moment is Wolfenstein: The New Order, because we know diddly squat about Doom 4.


I like what I'm seeing from Wolfenstein: The New Order. I'm a huge Wolfenstein/DOOM/Quake/Unreal/Half-Life fan. Along with a bunch of other FPS games I can't exactly list. But you get the idea. I'm an old-school gamer. :3 I hope DOOM 4 is a blast. :D

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Shaviro said:

But you do realize that "our audience" is extremely small, right?


Yes but it's worth it. I'd rather have a DOOM game dedicated to the DOOM community and DOOM fans in general as a way of saying sorry for DOOM 3, and is really solid and is a well done game. Much like a nice sirloin steak making up for a bad steak.

So in a nutshell, yeah I'd rather have a DOOM game that is dedicated to us. Just straight up unadulterated DOOM taken through a DOOM 3: Phobos style vision ;). Oh dang it.... I double posted. Sorry.... great. :(

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Doomguy777 said:

Yes but it's worth it. I'd rather have a DOOM game dedicated to the DOOM community and DOOM fans in general as a way of saying sorry for DOOM 3, and is really solid and is a well done game. Much like a nice sirloin steak making up for a bad steak.


Well yeah it would be nice if they didn't have to care at all about sales, but so far it must have been an extremely expensive game to develop. Their owners have also expressed that (the next) Doom should have an impact as great as Skyrim and generally be "as big". It is only logical that they attempt to reach those goals as they can't afford not to open up the game to the general audience. There is of course lots of wiggle room within those limitations, but it's probably not going to be a game catering mainly to Doom fans of yester-yesterdecade.

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Shaviro said:

Would love to hear them! This forum is littered with "AHMAGAWD NEEDS CONSTANT ACTION AND HEAVY METAL" and very little vision.


I'm a bit gunshy about going there, I've been avoiding it the whole time. I could write a mile long post on that subject. One of the reasons I won't do it is that I don't want to create a mental vision of a game that will most likely be completely different, I want to approach it with an open mind without too many pre-conceived ideas about it.

Another reason is that it would require a lot of effort. It's really not as simple as writing a bunch of bullet points like most people do. Really, a lot of points people list could objectively fit a thousand other games and most of them are not even exclusive to DOOM in any way, even though their authors believe so.

With that said, there are a lot of 'first person game' related things that I think shouldn/shouldn't be in neither DOOM 4 nor any other FPP game. Some of those include:

* Never leave first-person perspective.
* Don't use first-person cutscene animations for player actions - I think these do more harm than good. They just break the flow.
* Preferably don't use cutscenes at all. At the very least never take control away from the player. Don't introduce enemies through cutscenes. RAGE actually did a decent job at that. As did Dishonored.
* Don't artificially restrict player movement - let him/her jump onto objects and climb onto ledges. Dishonored is a fantastic example of non-restricted movement done right. DOOM Guy wouldn't be as agile of course, but his limitations should be natural, unlike in RAGE where you can't jump onto a table.
* Don't build the gameworld for the player. He/she should be an intruder, not a visitor of an exhibition. Convenient, cinematic path and extreme linearity are included.
* Gameplay should be 3D, horizontal AND vertical. Again, player should't be a visitor of an exhibition, shooting pop-up targets right in front of him/her. Quake E1 is a good example of how designers were having fun with truly 3D environments. Even if a game is not as abstract, it should incorporate as much of that mentality as possible.
* Combat should be movement based, not cover based. Player should generally be able to remain in combat for a period of time equivalent to his/her skills at movement, dodging, weapon selection and knowledge of both enemy types and the environment.
* id should definitively bring back and expand upon the hit reaction system from RAGE.

I have a huge list of other things but there's no point sharing them all now. Besides I bet id will break a lot of those 'laws' anyway so I don't want to overthink it.
______________________

However there's one other thing I want to touch upon and it's the infamous problem with identifying the 'essence' of DOOM and what kind of changes are acceptable. I'll try to be brief.

The way I see it is that the whole body of the game consists of constants and variables and it's important to understand which elements belong in which category. Most people fail at that miserably.

Bottom line is: constants are the essence of the game. Variables only need to fit within the confines of constants.

So for instance we can say that for DOOM a constant is "Marines versus demons". Another constant is "Demons from Hell". Another constant is "Cyberhell - supernatural / fantasy elements merged with cybernetic technology". When you have enough of those, you'll end up with the 'essence' of the game that is hopefully unique amongst other games.

Now, which elements are variables? This will be harder to swallow but... Enemy types are variables. Weapon types are variables. Environment types are variables. And so on.

This is in my opinion one of the biggest sources of misconceptions. What happens is that people confuse constants with variables. Or rather, that they fail to understand that certain elements indeed ARE variables, not constants. This is where things get messy. If everything is classed as constants, nothing can be done because any change will be an 'unacceptable travesty'.

But certain elements ARE variables and one has to accept that fact in order to actually get somewhere. DOOM is not about a specific cast of monsters. You may consider them classic and irreplacable but at the end of the day, their types are variables. It only matters if the monsters fit the rules defined by constants.

That's, I believe, the main reason for the dispute. I bet if you'd let the community make DOOM 4, they'd class every element as constant and end up with some kind of an abomination that doesn't really feel like DOOM at all. Why? Because DOOM has no place in today's world? No, because the essence of it is elsewhere. The possibilities are huge when you let go of the false mindset that everything in the original DOOM is sacred.

Note the new Shadow Warrior. It's not a perfect remake but consider this: none of the original enemies return. Yet they still fit within the SW world. Why? Because they fulfil the requirements of constants and guess what? That's enough. You may say it's because the enemy cast in SW is not as legendary as the one in DOOM but I don't believe that's a correct explaination for that. It's a short-sighted reason, in my opinion.

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YES:
-More ambient soundtrack. I know Doom is known for heavy metal, but it was probably only about half the music. Remember Quake 2? It had good music, but you get fatigued fast because it's nonstop intensity the entire time. They could probably make it a dynamic soundtrack, with music intensity proportional to how many enemies are aggro'd and what not.

-(Non-intrusive) Story. It could do well to be more present than in Doom 1/2, but it doesn't need to have long cutscenes. I think having audiologs is a good way, you can get lore if you want it and ignore them if you don't. I'd hope nothing much like Half Life (stuck in first-person cutscenes that you can't skip, they're very grating on replays)

I was thinking a general progression could be like Earth (pre-invasion) fighting a demonic cult/zombiemen > Called to Mars/moon bases to repel strange invasion (where everyone else dies, comms get cut off, you're on your own) > Hell (only for a bit, here you discover that they've invaded Earth and go back) > Back to Earth (invaded and apocalyptic) > Hell (to finish it off). Throw in flavor about the UAC having dubious morality, or maybe discover that UAC invaded Hell first (so there'd be corrupted bases there where you can get more gear) and that the invasion was a retaliation. Of course, it's too late for negotiation now!

-Variety. Make it feel like every area is distinct and with different purposes. This is one place where Doom 3 failed. Having it spread out to more than just one Mars base can take care of that.

-Fast movespeed. Not Original Doom/Jedi Knight speed, but something closer to Quake 1 would be fine.

-Large Bestiary: I'm not saying every classic monster needs to return, but the more monsters, the more fun fighting them is!

MAYBE:
-Inventory. I know, I know...but honestly at this point I don't think they'll make as good a pure shooter as the originals no matter what they try, so they might as well shake things up a bit. I mean Tetris-style inventory like Deus Ex or System Shock 2 (but possibly with more space). So you could still carry tons of guns if you wanted, or you could choose to stock up on medkits and what not instead. Your choice.

-Survival-oriented. See above. That doesn't mean it can't have plenty of action, but it would add an element of more planning to every encounter, and also trying to learn more about areas before you storm right in. This would work best with with a more open-world approach (also more like Deus Ex, or Crysis 1, I'm not talking Fallout 3 or RAGE here). I think one of the central features of Doom is the "One man VS everything else" tradition, and this can help that out a bit. This is the vibe I got from the Doom Bible doc, too

-Weapon upgrades. Found by exploring. Cool things like a belt-fed shotgun to eliminate needing to reload, or other things like a burst-fire mod for the pistol to keep it viable as you go on.

NO:
-Ludicrous gibs. I always thought Doom's gore worked better as a horror aspect and not balls-to-the-wall-painting-the-walls-red-with-every-shot gore splatter. Of course explosives and high-power guns should still turn enemies into kibble, but I'd prefer if it wasn't like Brutal Doom where every bullet usually cuts an enemy in half. I think the new XCOM game had pretty good gore; enemies got properly mangled and covered in blood when they died and they laid there in big puddles, but it didn't splatter all the walls and cover everything up.

-Wide open arena levels. This is the main reason I don't think Serious Sam and Hard Reset and the like are really like 'retro' shooters, because the maps are flat and not much more than connected football-field sized arenas. However, they should definitely be less claustrophobic than Doom 3.

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DOOM 4 to me should have extreme blood and gore. We should see limbs flying, heads flying, sharpnel of bone, guts, blood, it shouldn't be little generic blood mists. It should cause controversy again like it did when it was first released back in 1993. We should see how the demons react to getting shot. Also, I don't believe in having a pure ambient soundtrack or pure heavy metal soundtrack. Rather have a mix of the two. Some levels are ambient, some are heavy metal, to me it all depends on the mood of the level. That's another thing, levels should have mood and be actual levels (DOOM 1, DOOM 2) and when it comes to the Hell levels....

Please id Software take notes from DOOM 64 when it comes to the Hell levels. DOOM 64 did a fine job at doing Hell, of course DOOM 1 did as well. DOOM 2 I don't think so as much. :P

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Doomguy777 said:

DOOM 4 to me should have extreme blood and gore. We should see limbs flying, heads flying, sharpnel of bone, guts, blood, it shouldn't be little generic blood mists. It should cause controversy again like it did when it was first released back in 1993. We should see how the demons react to getting shot. Also, I don't believe in having a pure ambient soundtrack or pure heavy metal soundtrack. Rather have a mix of the two. Some levels are ambient, some are heavy metal, to me it all depends on the mood of the level. That's another thing, levels should have mood and be actual levels (DOOM 1, DOOM 2) and when it comes to the Hell levels....


I hate extreme blood and gore. It just gets tasteless for me when it goes over the top (Rise of the Triad 2013 being the perfect example). So I'd say I disagree with you on that aspect.

As for music, though, I agree that ambient or heavy metal alone would not work too well. It definitely needs to be a mix. If not for entire levels, at least have the music change from ambient to heavy metal during battle sequences and then back when they're all down, a la Shadowgrounds. Looking at Doom, it featured excellent heavy-ish AND ambient tracks. That is what makes its soundtrack so awesome.

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I'm not even much of a gore freak, but I do think it would be nice if Doom 4 had some extreme gore. The "fall over and evaporate" deaths of Doom 3 were pitiful compared to the Doom & Doom II death animations, with barons breaking in half with their guts spilling all over the floor, or mancubi and their skull caps shattering, causing all their skin to slide off the bone. Gross! But that's part of what gave Doom its character, and it would be cool to bring that back.

Really, Id just needs to study Brutal Doom as much as possible. It's gotten extremely popular for a reason.

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Megamur said:Really, Id just needs to study Brutal Doom as much as possible. It's gotten extremely popular for a reason.

DOOM 4 to me should have extreme blood and gore. We should see limbs flying, heads flying, sharpnel of bone, guts, blood, it shouldn't be little generic blood mists. It should cause controversy again like it did when it was first released back in 1993.

I don't know, there are plenty of ways to be controversial without using Brutal Doom's gore...

Guts sliding out on death yes. (I have not seen this in any 3D game I can imagine, in fact, so unlike dismemberment this would actually be a fresh and new thing to do) Gallons of blood splurting out from every single bullet hit and covering every wall on the map, no. Enemies screaming for several seconds after being blown apart already, no.

I think a lot of the reason Doom had gory deaths (such as Mancubi's flesh sliding off the bone and Cyberdemons exploding into a puddle of blood) is not only because of gore for the sake of gore but also to prevent huge corpses from obstructing a lot of the player's view. Brutal Doom's gore kindof works against that premise, I think, since the blood sprays have huge volume and it tends to cover up the map and stick around forever. I'm not saying the corpses should disentigrate Doom 3 style, but it doesn't need to have blood puddles on the ceiling dripping blood until the end of time.

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When will people realize that Brutal DOOM is closer to Blood rather than DOOM? DOOM has mostly sci-fi violence. Brutal DOOM is like a Troma movie where extreme gore comes a full circle and becomes silly rather than disturbing.

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Touchdown said:

When will people realize that Brutal DOOM is closer to Blood rather than DOOM? DOOM has mostly sci-fi violence. Brutal DOOM is like a Troma movie where extreme gore comes a full circle and becomes silly rather than disturbing.

This.

Brutal Doom isn't what Doom should be, it is just cheesy violence for the sake of cheesy violence and if all you want your game to be is dead body simulator...

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What should Doom 4 have? Been cancelled. It will never live up to anyone's expectations, its development is a mess, and they should try to refine Rage into something better than to revisit old stuff.

Doomguy777 said:

It should cause controversy again like it did when it was first released back in 1993.

Video game violence will never be as controversial as it was in the '90s. Keep in mind that video games were seen as children's toys by the public at large, rather than another artistic medium. The adults back then who were outraged are the same people today in rocking chairs, watching Faux News, and living in nursing homes waiting to die. The kids of the time are the productive adults of today, making these kinds of games.

Cultural attitudes shift and populations age. You don't see anyone complaining about how comic books are ruining our culture anymore, do you?

Megamur said:

Really, Id just needs to study Brutal Doom as much as possible. It's gotten extremely popular for a reason.

People compare Doom to the games today, and exaggerate the difference in their heads, without looking at what Doom WAS compared to its contemporaries of the time. Doom was dark, realistic and scary, for the time. Today, people have built of a narrative of how it's all about non-stop cartoon action and violence, just because that's what Classic Doom is when contrasted to Modern Borefare.

Brutal Doom is a shitty mod, anyhow. It completely debalances the original careful arrangement of speed, health and damage that id set up, has loud and obnoxious everything, and the author is a jerk. As much as Doom 3 went too far in the other direction, it still feels more Doom to me than that abuse of advanced ports.

Doom 3 is just Doom, but too dark and slow. Turn up the brightness and pace, and it's quite faithful to the core concept of the classic games, even if execution is rather different.

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Sodaholic said:

What should Doom 4 have? Been cancelled. It will never live up to anyone's expectations


I feel bad for id because they will get bashed no matter what they do. But honestly, I don't care as long as I like the game. If I enjoy it when it comes out, that's all that matters. If I don't, which is unlikely, it's not like the world will come apart. I don't see why it should be cancelled just because there are idiots who will not judge it fairly.

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Isn't the same guys who (are) develop(ed/ing) Wolf The New Order making it? If so, I heard stuff about TNO having non linear levels and, of course, numbered health and armor. Maybe Doom 4 will be good. But we still have yet for Wolfenstein to even be released.

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MG_Man said:

I think a lot of the reason Doom had gory deaths (such as Mancubi's flesh sliding off the bone and Cyberdemons exploding into a puddle of blood) is not only because of gore for the sake of gore but also to prevent huge corpses from obstructing a lot of the player's view.

There would be more weight to this argument if not for gigantic corpses like the cacodemon that are quite difficult to see past. Wolf 3D had instant replays for boss deaths so if you missed it, you could get a better look at your enemies spurting their guts everywhere and dissolving into puddles of goo. Id loved gore, just for gore's sake. Otherwise, I doubt they would've created gibs. Gibs serve no gameplay purpose. They're just gross and squishy for the sake of pure, visceral satisfaction.

And I think Brutal Doom is a dumb, silly mod, too, but there's no denying its success and massive appeal. People who never even gave a crap about Doom, who just saw it as old and archaic and a waste of time, were suddenly firing it up so they could play Brutal Doom and watch the guts fly.

And at least if Doom 4 were ridiculously gory, it would be a nice change of pace from the "serious" violence of most modern FPS games.

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In terms of blood and gore, it should be not on a Brutal DOOM level but it should be there you know. I like seeing limbs fly off, I like seeing heads fly off, I don't like ROTT 2013 extreme, but I do like extreme gore but not to the point where it's stupid. I want to see bones crack, blood flow, guts spill out, and awesome fucking death animations like in DOOM 1 and 2. I'm sick'n tired of the little blood mists we get now-a-days. I want blood and gore. I actually want the RATED M for Mature: Blood and Gore Violence

I want it to actually MEAN something. You know it has Blood and Gore Violence for a reason so they should have BLOOD AND GORE!

I mean what the fuck happened man? After Soldier of Fortune we decided gore is too extreme and everything should be little pansy ass blood mists. No... fuck no, WE NEED BLOOD AND GORE! I want it to be violent, fast-paced, brutal, and fucked up. I want it to be old-school DOOM made even better. We need a lot of Hell levels as well too. Just saying. We really need a lot of Hell levels.

DOOM! \m/

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Doomguy777 said:

I don't like ROTT 2013 extreme

[...]

I mean what the fuck happened man? After Soldier of Fortune we decided gore is too extreme and everything should be little pansy ass blood mists.

So you want a realistic down-to-earth show that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?

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Megamur said:

it would be a nice change of pace from the "serious" violence of most modern FPS games.

Serrious Violence?! Most shooters today are about unserious violence. Which I think just doesn't fit in a shooter.(example:Borderlands,Team fortress 2,Bullet Storm)

MG_Man said:

Guts sliding out on death yes. (I have not seen this in any 3D game I can imagine, in fact, so unlike dismemberment this would actually be a fresh and new thing to do)

What about Soldier of Fortune?

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GoatLord said:

I remember seeing intestinal damage in Turok 2.

Oh ya forgot about that game, remember the Cerebral Bore?

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Hold on, there is a Doom (4) beta in the works...

The only games to really get any public betas are online multiplayer focused games, RPG's, MMO's and Online RPG's.

The chance that this "Beta" will demonstrate single player is very low from the looks of it, otherwise it would be called a "demo".

So we getting an MMO set in hell? :P

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If it's primarily for multiplayer, I'm sure it's for some kind of deathmatch mode. It'd be absurd if it was an MMO.

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Megamur said:

So you want a realistic down-to-earth show that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?


No... It's just that whenever I voice my opinion about having extreme blood and gore, lots of heavy metal and ambient music, awesome weapons like DOOM 1 and 2, and 1/2 the game take place in Hell everyone yells at me and tells me I'm so wrong for wanting it and calls it a "indie game". You know what I'd rather have a fucking indie game that's fun then have some story-driven emotional game that makes me cry and shit and isn't really that good (see Aliens: Colonial Marines, Bioshock: Infinite, and yes I'll be honest with you it was overhyped WAY too much but hey I'm sorry if I disagree with public opinon. I'm a rebel OK?!)

I don't want a COD clone. I just want DOOM. I don't want DOOM 64, I want DOOM 2 on crack. Am I asking for Brutal DOOM? No, but I want blood and guts everywhere, tons of ACTUAL demons (not like DOOM 3) and corpses not disappearing. Ragdoll physics, complex level designs, secret areas, no regenerating health, fast-paced gameplay, extremely fast reloading, and awesome music! DOOM FOREVER MAN! :D

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Sodaholic said:

If it's primarily for multiplayer, I'm sure it's for some kind of deathmatch mode. It'd be absurd if it was an MMO.

Will it come with double XP if I buy Doritos?

Pointless jokes aside, it would probably be a way of trying to re-capture the multiplayer genre or try again with multiplayer only games (Because ET: Quake Wars may have been fun, just try and find a populated server on it).

Or the we all will be beta testers for a great singleplayer game, we will only know when it happens.

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