Flaws in Doom 16'

On 12/31/2017 at 7:32 AM, ATP2555 said:

There's seems to be a trend in iD universe games where the enemies with shotguns can fire them automatically, whereas the player can only fire in pump-action.

Which game would that be? I'm curious. In Doom the Sergeants pause, and often move between shots, so even though they didn't animate the pumping, there's a break between firing. In Quake the shotgunners pause between shots and you can hear them pump their shotgun. In Quake 2 the soldiers with shotguns implanted in their arm actually have an animation where they rack the slide between every shot. In Doom 3 the Z-sec shotgun guys break for at least a second in between shots, I can't recall if they had a pump animation or not, but there was a break. I'm not sure about Rage, I didn't play all that much of it. But I've never seen an enemy with an automatic shotgun in an id game.

Disappearing corpses. That is all. 

But seriously, while the art direction is very much inspired by the classic games (even Doom 64 gets some love), it really doesn’t quite have the Gigeresque spirit that the original game was crawling with. 

Additionally, while the arenas were fairly understandable, the environments got increasingly more “gamey,” meaning that the UAC bases don’t feel like actual people lived and worked in them, and the Hell levels feel more confined than chaotic. Titan’s Realm/Necropolis and the Lazarus Labs/VEGA Processing are pretty much the worst offenders here. 

Seriously, I was ecstatic when I found that in New Colossus, enemy corpses not only had left blood pools and better impact marks, there were also levels that Doom 2016 desperately needed, like anything on the Venus base!

One of my (very few) issues with DOOM is that it doesn't feel very "Doom" at some points; specifically, during the platforming sections, with the double-jumping and whatnot. For me, though, this isn't exactly a major issuesince it's not exactly the main focus (I dunno if I'm making sense here :p)

3 hours ago, Man of Doom said:

Disappearing corpses.

My second issue. I would've liked to have had the corpses stay when you kill them, but iirc permanent corpses would impact performance because of the amount of collision-checking there would need to be done for the ragdolls. I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly or if I'm even saying it right, so if I'm wrong, someone please tell me.

Ragdoll physics can easily be turned off moments after the Physics body hit a solid ground, as for the level of detail Models seemed retopologized so I don't think they would affect the perfomance very badly, the latter is purely speculation though, a stress test on the engine with the same models would give a better idea to why they decided to make corpses disappear.

1.  Glory Kills - I turned it off but the monsters would still become invulnerable while staggered.

2.  Lack of new monsters in later levels - the monster flow is great up to the the second visit to hell.  The game needed more monster types/variants.

3.  The level design was great, but also fell victim to the "arena" style especially in later levels.

4.  Console limitations plaguing the pc version.  This was mostly seen in SnapMap and MP

5.  The game ended, and ID hasn't said a thing about SP DLC.

6.  Lame boss battles (esp the Hell Gaurd).  Also, only 1 Cyberdemon after seeing multiple in promotional material.

1 hour ago, Zemini said:

1.  Glory Kills - I turned it off but the monsters would still become invulnerable while staggered.

2.  Lack of new monsters in later levels - the monster flow is great up to the the second visit to hell.  The game needed more monster types/variants.

3.  The level design was great, but also fell victim to the "arena" style especially in later levels.

4.  Console limitations plaguing the pc version.  This was mostly seen in SnapMap and MP

5.  The game ended, and ID hasn't said a thing about SP DLC.

6.  Lame boss battles (esp the Hell Gaurd).  Also, only 1 Cyberdemon after seeing multiple in promotional material.

 

There were supposed to be more Cyberdemons but got cut out of the game.

I'd say the MP was a right shitshow until they fixed it much later down the line, this was a little too late in my opinion and the MP should've shipped like it is now.

Still not a fan of Matchmaking and Loadouts, I especially hate the players who start with Rocket Launchers within their loadouts.

12 minutes ago, dmg_64 said:

Still not a fan of Matchmaking and Loadouts, I especially hate the players who start with Rocket Launchers within their loadouts.

Dual shotguns are much worse, much worse.

Almost everything that I can think of has been said.

I will point out that I'm disappointed in the load times of Snapmap, how long it took to create strict sp maps with no limits, the poor custom map navigation that promotes older unrefined and useless point farming maps. Finally, that there are no Bosses or Summoner monsters to play with.

It seems to me that SnapMap should have a "pro" mode you can switch to, if you want to more in-depth stuff.

18 hours ago, Man of Doom said:

But seriously, while the art direction is very much inspired by the classic games (even Doom 64 gets some love), it really doesn’t quite have the Gigeresque spirit that the original game was crawling with. 

 

I'm guessing the lack of Giger'esque stuff was deliberate; they wanted to make this "horror for the whole family", so while they wanted the "horror" to convey the sense that yes, Demons = BAD, they didn't actually want the game to be scary or creepy.

Giger'esque stuff tends to be disturbing, which I figure would have gone against Id's objective for this game.

Often times while reading the lore I felt like we were playing the aftermath of a much more interesting story. Everything with the Night Sentinels, the Wraiths, The Hell Priests, the Wretch, the huge battle against the Titan. Hell, using the Crucible, as I'm pretty sure it was implied the Slayer had used it before. All of that went on, and instead we're stuck doing cleanup duty cause some nerds were poking around in Hell. 

A prequel game would be pretty sweet. 

On 1/22/2018 at 1:06 PM, dmg_64 said:

Ragdoll physics can easily be turned off moments after the Physics body hit a solid ground, as for the level of detail Models seemed retopologized so I don't think they would affect the perfomance very badly, the latter is purely speculation though, a stress test on the engine with the same models would give a better idea to why they decided to make corpses disappear.

This may have to do with the fact that physics have been enabled for every object in the game that isn't part of the environment. This ranges from chairs and fire extinguishers, to the corpses of various UAC scientists/workers. In fact, you can actually choose to shoot human corpses and they'll lose limbs like the demons.

A few more flaws (some debatable, some a little nitpicky) I was recently reminded of:

- The Challenges often require you to take 'unnecessary' risks that take you out of the experience of actually trying to survive. It's a cool idea from a replayability aspect, but it is a bit immersion breaking.

- The Secret level lever pulling animation is too damned long. Isn't the Doom Slayer supposed to have super-Human strength? Why then does he even have to struggle with pulling the levers?

- As cool as Hell is and as much as each Hell map has unique details and qualities that are unique to said map, the overall impression of Hell is very samey: bunch of rock caves and ancient ruins, lots of skulls and bones and ancient, impaled corpses. I found the various techbase facilities more obviously distinctive than the Hell levels, even if they do ensure some indoor vs. outdoor variety in Hell's level themes.

- The high-tech Labs theme is slightly underused, even if it is used here and there in some of the industrial-themed maps. This is a nitpick, but it is one that occasionally shows up in the back of my head, so I might as well mention it.

- The Lost Souls manage to be even more annoying than the original ones. Maybe I just suck, but I find them nearly impossible to dodge if I'm in the middle of a massive battle and they suddenly spawn in somewhere where I don't have eyes on them. Feels a little cheap when used like that.

- Possible Spoiler:

- The Chaingun is rather disappointing until you get the Mobile Turret mod. For such a high-ranking weapon, it does come across as rather inefficient and under-powered, not to mention that its lore suggests that it's a literal portable Autocannon (even without the Mobile Turret mod), but it doesn't come across in gameplay (its bullets feel only slightly more powerful than those of the HAR).

Later upgrades gives it kind of a disappointing pew-pew firing sound if you're using the Gatling Rotator mod, which is a bit of a shame because its default sound before that upgrade is decent.

I'm really hoping the sequel has a better chaingun.

- The Plasma Rifle lacks upgrades for its primary fire mode. Both of its mods are invaluable and prevent the weapon from being useless, but its regular fire feels almost kind of redundant in the late game.

Speaking of plot, I don't like that I didn't really give two shits about it. There's too many moving parts and yet none of them are explained very well. There's some cool ideas—the UAC being a cult, the concept of harvesting Hell's energy, a cyborg containing a copy of a human consciousness, the player being some kind of supernatural warrior—but neither the cutscenes or the lengthy codex entries really caught me interest. I feel like this could have been presented with more cohesion and direction.

Oh, and @dsm, I'm not so sure that "horror for the whole family" was the aim here. I think it's more like "Alien" versus "Aliens." The former used quite a bit of Giger's designs and was more of a slow burner, while the latter was more action packed and had no direct involvement from Giger. Doom '16 feels a bit like that, where some of the original game's elements were deemphasized in favor of increased action. It's a much more kinetic experience, one that would be hindered by moody horror elements. I'm really hoping the sequel will have more of the vibes that made Doom 3 and Doom 64 memorable.

4 hours ago, GoatLord said:

I'm not so sure that "horror for the whole family" was the aim here. I think it's more like "Alien" versus "Aliens." The former used quite a bit of Giger's designs and was more of a slow burner, while the latter was more action packed and had no direct involvement from Giger. Doom '16 feels a bit like that, where some of the original game's elements were deemphasized in favor of increased action.

I was really paraphrasing Hugo Martin in the NoClip Documentary "Doom Resurrected", in which he pretty much stated that they didn't want the game to be disturbing and he says something about "Horror for the whole family". I recommend you watch it if you haven't already as it's pretty interesting.

DOOM Resurrected Part 1

DOOM Resurrected Part 2

DOOM Resurrected Part 3

I agree that the result is a bit like you said; analogous to Alien (Doom 1993) and Aliens (Doom 2016).

While Doom '16 was great in general (I loved how the designers replicated the more intense mechanics of Brutal Doom, since I still haven't gotten around to actually playing that), in my opinion it would have been nice if some enemies from Doom 3 were included, such as the Trites and Cherubs. I also like the Doom 3 version of the pinky demon. Say what you want about it, I know Doom 3 had flaws, but I couldn't help but want to see some of that in the fourth installment.

- Watered down map level editing tools

- Multiplayer dead after a few months

- Load-outs are like Halo

- Largely dumbed down to appeal to console players so more money could be made

- Wrong name. It's proper name is DOOM 4.

This topic seems to be necroed every month or so, so might as well put my input here.

Ahhh yes, the flaws, where do I start? This will be a long one....

1) Glory kills - good idea, terrible execution. Yes they are flashy and cool and so hardcore and so brutal OMFG!!! But the stagger making the monsters regain health is unacceptable. There should not even be a stagger "grace period". You do overkill damage? Your bad. Why do they regain a part of their health whenever they are staggered? Also, the health and ammo from glory kills completely breaks the balance. The fact that the amount you get adjusts to your current health level is even more offending. Why do they reward bad play by awarding you more health? Makes any resource management completely pointless and irrelevant. And ammo? Just chainsaw the nearest enemy and you are full on everything. JOKE!!! There is also the invulnerability while doing them, which is basically a get out of jail free card, although if a projectile hits you just as the animation finishes, you will get hit.

2) UAC becomes a crazed cult obsessed with Hell for some reason.

3) Extremely cheap difficulty system. Just boost damage and health of monsters to nonsensical levels and call it a day (mainly the damage). Unreal is a shining example of how difficulty  system should be done and it is fairly balanced, unlike most modern games where bigger damage numbers = difficulty.

4) Checkpoint only saves are simply unacceptable and extremely annoying. And if a game contains multiple areas that are a point of no return and you missed something, it just makes me want to quit. And hell forbid if you go the "unintended" way and trigger all the checkpoints in an area (main culprit here is the Foundry) and then die, having to do 25 minutes again just because you ran out of checkpoints a while ago and cannot save in any other way. And only 3 game slots????

5) Enemy balance. Probably the most dangerous enemies are the ones in the first level of the game. Imps and the soldiers, because they do extreme damage for being considered low tier enemies, while Revenants are on the level of zombiemen in this game.

6) The player character gives the impression of a mute asocial with severe anger management issues. Every cutscene is basically "ME DON'T UNDERSTAND, ME SMASH EVERYTHING, DOOMSLAYER ANGRY!!". The only time I was positively surprised by him was when he made a backup of Vega.

I cannot give this game more than 7/10. And I if it wasn't Doom, it would have probably been a 6.5/10.

9 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

But the stagger making the monsters regain health is unacceptable.

They don't, to my knowledge, outside of bosses. Regular enemies just start moving again and their stagger threshold is lowered.

9 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

There should not even be a stagger "grace period".

There isn't, if you're referring to an enemy not dying because they have to enter the stagger state to die. No, what's really going on there is that the stagger threshold is a significant portion of an enemy's total health pool, so with most enemies it's impossible to kill them with standard weapons before they enter the state. Pull out the BFG, though, or use weapons like the rocket launcher, SSG, or gauss cannon on minor enemies like imps, and you'll see there's nothing keeping you from just outright killing them with a meatshot. Hell, the normal shotgun can do this to the basic possessed.

9 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Makes any resource management completely pointless and irrelevant. And ammo? Just chainsaw the nearest enemy and you are full on everything. JOKE!!!

Not ... really? This just basically rolls backpacks and a danmaku-style panic button into the new chainsaw, meaning that optimal usage of chainsaw fuel extends your basic ammo counts by the amount of chainsaw fuel you have. 'Course, if you're actually hunting for ammo then you don't really ever need the chainsaw for ammo. Probably boils down to enabling people who just want to swing from encounter to encounter to not run out of ammo unless they severely misuse it and the chainsaw.

9 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

2) UAC becomes a crazed cult obsessed with Hell for some reason.

That's just the people who follow Olivia, who is clearly stringing them along for her own benefit. The fact that the rest of the UAC was just exploiting Hell without worshiping it is just a bit undersold by the fact that everyone but Olivia and Hayden have been killed by the time you get to them. Y'know, by the demons, like in the original Doom.

9 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

5) Enemy balance. Probably the most dangerous enemies are the ones in the first level of the game. Imps and the soldiers, because they do extreme damage for being considered low tier enemies, while Revenants are on the level of zombiemen in this game.

This really has more to do with how much stronger you get over the course of the game, like with the expanded arsenal, weapon upgrade, Argent upgrades, runestones, and Elite Guard upgrades, than anything to do with the enemies. Honestly, ( aside from the revenants ), all of the high tier demons did seem a lot tougher and more dangerous to me than the lower tier ones, it's just that they don't pop up until you've already got your foot in the door and the lower tier ones don't wait for you to get your bearings.

4 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

They don't, to my knowledge, outside of bosses. Regular enemies just start moving again and their stagger threshold is lowered.

Some portion of their HP is reserved for the stagger state. When I was trying to kill a Mancubus with the pistol for the challenge, I had to stagger him 5 times before actually being able to kill him by just the pistol. The stagger health amount apparently gets lowered by 20% every time they enter it, meaning a limit of 5 times. After that, his health to enter stagger equals 0, so he just dies instead of entering stagger. However, upon exiting the stagger state, every time, I had to shoot him again many times before he got staggered again, meaning that they do regain health. If they didn't, he would have been staggered immediately by the next shot. The mancubus is a great example, because the pistol simply does not have enough DPS on nightmare difficulty to kill him fast enough in the stagger state before he breaks out of it. Glory kills should have been one time opportunity only. You miss it, tough luck.

8 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

There isn't, if you're referring to an enemy not dying because they have to enter the stagger state to die. No, what's really going on there is that the stagger threshold is a significant portion of an enemy's total health pool, so with most enemies it's impossible to kill them with standard weapons before they enter the state. Pull out the BFG, though, or use weapons like the rocket launcher, SSG, or gauss cannon on minor enemies like imps, and you'll see there's nothing keeping you from just outright killing them with a meatshot. Hell, the normal shotgun can do this to the basic possessed.

Yes, the threshold can be overridden by powerful weapons and explosives or just if the damage is high enough relatively to the monster's HP. But the problem with the less powerful weapons is, that if a tough enemy enters a stagger state and you do not glory kill him but do 99% of the damage required to kill him while he is in the stagger and the he gets out of it at the last second, on the next stagger, you will have to do the full amount again, meaning you lost bullets and the enemy healed.

12 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

Not ... really? This just basically rolls backpacks and a danmaku-style panic button into the new chainsaw, meaning that optimal usage of chainsaw fuel extends your basic ammo counts by the amount of chainsaw fuel you have. 'Course, if you're actually hunting for ammo then you don't really ever need the chainsaw for ammo. Probably boils down to enabling people who just want to swing from encounter to encounter to not run out of ammo unless they severely misuse it and the chainsaw.

The problem is that you can keep using one weapon through the entire game and the moment you run out of ammo, chainsaw something that costs 1 fuel to kill and you can keep on using the one weapon for as long as you can. And the fuel is frequent enough so that you definitely do not run out of ammo for it. It totally eliminates any need to ever look for ammo. I almost never pick up ammo that is placed in the world, because one chainsaw kill just fills everything up instantly. And you have 5 free refills between any gas tank for the chainsaw. Not to mention the comical piñata effect that ensues after doing it.

16 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

That's just the people who follow Olivia, who is clearly stringing them along for her own benefit. The fact that the rest of the UAC was just exploiting Hell without worshiping it is just a bit undersold by the fact that everyone but Olivia and Hayden have been killed by the time you get to them. Y'know, by the demons, like in the original Doom.

I agree that this is just my personal pet peeve, but I just didn't like the general vibe in which they presented the UAC in this game.

19 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

This really has more to do with how much stronger you get over the course of the game, like with the expanded arsenal, weapon upgrade, Argent upgrades, runestones, and Elite Guard upgrades, than anything to do with the enemies. Honestly, ( aside from the revenants ), all of the high tier demons did seem a lot tougher and more dangerous to me than the lower tier ones, it's just that they don't pop up until you've already got your foot in the door and the lower tier ones don't wait for you to get your bearings.

Imps were my most frequent cause of death even late in the game because they are small, look unthreatening and are everywhere, yet their projectile does 45 damage which is just silly. Yes, the high tier demons are tougher (more hitpoints), but more dangerous? No. Their threat level is in many cases lower than that of a simple imp. While dealing with some other more "major threat" like a mancubus, getting hit for 1/5 of your health when fully upgraded by some extremely distant imp was far more devastating than anything else. No need to mention if a soldier spawns somewhere behind you and uses the power attack which deals more damage than pretty much anything in the game.

6 hours ago, Arctangent said:

...Hayden have been killed by the time you get to them. Y'know, by the demons, like in the original Doom.

I thought Hayden died from some form of cancer before the Argent Tower was complete?

11 minutes ago, Pyrolex said:

I thought Hayden died from some form of cancer before the Argent Tower was complete?

Yes, but he came back as a robot because science.

Just now, Space Boss said:

Yes, but he came back as a robot because science.

Yeah, that I knew, I was just confused because I didn't recall seeing anything in the codexes about him dying to demons :P

6 hours ago, Pyrolex said:

I thought Hayden died from some form of cancer before the Argent Tower was complete?

No, he was dying of cancer but put his brain into a robot body before it could spread to it. It's the standard way of going about giving oneself a robot body, with no resurrection involved.

Well a lot of my personal issues with DOOM4 echo what a lot of people think:

| There are only like three levels with a more open-ended level design and later on it's basically room-to-room stuff. More levels should have been like the Foundry or Argent Facility.

| Lack of encounter variety, too many arenas, especially later in the game. Not enough 'regular' encounters. I'd love to see some 'turret' enemies on cliffs and such specifically acting as artillery.

| Some of the challenges / masteries were kind of clunky, forcing the player to do some weird, arbitrary things in order to upgrade their stuff.

| As mentioned before, the whole backstory remains completely unexplored. They've started a lot of topics and abandoned pretty much all of them.

| Some monsters could have been more unique in their behaviour and combat capabilities. Revenant for instance, everyone's favourite 'difficulty amplifier' is a complete pushover and requires no real tactic to fight.

| Some of the later levels feeling like a bunch of challenge rooms rather than actual places.

Then there are things that annoy me and probably only me:

| I don't like the whole 'Doomguy is a demigod' thingy. It's kind of like Brutal Doom, it doesn't bother me on its own but in this case people are just reinforced in their delusion that Doomguy is this ultimate badass killing machine. In EVERY other DOOM game he's just a marine, a survivor caught up in a situation. A badass survivor, yes, but a survivor nonetheless.

| DOOM4 completely skips over the horror element, the sense of dread that was important in many instances in the original games. DOOM3 pulled it maybe too far in that direction but DOOM4, instead of finding the right balance, just did the polar opposite. I think it's lacking in terms of atmosphere. Destroyed Argent Facility is the only level that kind of leans in that direction.

| Some enemies are too cartoony, too deep in the overstylized Blizzard style. Nobody agrees with me on this but the Pinky demon is the primary example of that.

| Hell in general doesn't really feel hellish, it's just a regular 'fantasy land' as far as I'm concerned.

| The few cutscenes that the game has are generally boring and locking the player in place during them is just stupid. If you have to force me to watch the cutscene, you probably know it's garbage.

There are many things I could nitpick but there's not much point. The game is fantastic. Really the main problems I have with it are the atmosphere and lack of encounter variety.

On 2/28/2018 at 7:50 AM, MINDDomakr said:

- Multiplayer dead after a few months

Not quite? Still a lively scene and I can grab quite a lot of matches daily.

Unless if you're set in Asia-Pacific server, that one is quite quiet.

@Touchdown You pretty much nailed all my complaints.

9 hours ago, Touchdown said:

Hell in general doesn't really feel hellish, it's just a regular 'fantasy land' as far as I'm concerned.

I agree with this, not that hell was bad, but it really didn't fell like hell at all, instead it looked more like a barren wasteland. If there was anything that Doom 3 did better than D2016 was that hell really looked like hell, it really looked and sounded evil and despite being too short, it really left a strong impression