Do People Really Like Classic Doom For What It Is?

I had a thought in my mind wondering about some gamers loving the original Doom games.

Removed to prevent derailment

I think people still love classic Doom today grace to the numerous great source ports which improve the global game experience in many way controls,graphics,fps etc...
Most popular mods like Brutal Doom would have never exist without source ports.

I'm here, I prefer playing the game without gameplay mods so after finishing all of the Main game levels, I was glad to find out there are more Custom Community-made levelpacks which are, in a way, more of the same thing but offer new locations to explore.

EDIT: now that there's a poll, I'd say both, Levelpacks are like an extension to vanilla experience but they also qualify as mods.

48 minutes ago, Space Marinara said:

Who's "they" and why do you care what anyone else does?

Thanks for noticing the error. It's towards the Doom games, but I fixed it.

It was just a thought I had.

I like both

Removed to prevent derailment

Classic Doom >>>>>> Mods >>>>>>> Aeons of Death/Brutal Doom/Project Brutality

<3

I love the IWAD's. Even today they still have replayability.

It's fun to go through The Abandoned Mines, The Living End, Impossible Mission, and others again.

2 minutes ago, Space Marinara said:

It wasn't the "they" I was referring to. You're indirectly asking us to generalise on what other people's preferences might be. There's two degrees of separation in your questioning. Just make a poll and get some direct feedback. Of course the results won't be relevant to you or anyone else, barring the participants, because it's just personal opinion.

Aaah. Sorry for misunderstanding what you said. You're right, I should make a poll out of this.

1 hour ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

Do they actually love them for what the games are?

Up to them. Make a poll to be sure.

1 hour ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

Or do they just like Classic Doom for the mods?

Poll again. I prefer either way anyway, vanilla or modded.

1 hour ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

Would they play the games as intended or put gameplay changing mods in them?

Kinda redundant question because of the second question above.

I don't think most of the people who play Classic Doom do enjoy the vanilla experience. However, I am interested in an actual simple statistics, so I would say having a poll like leodoom85 said is a good idea.

For me, I definitely go for the vanilla experience, but I also can feel it's a very niche thing. This reminds me of the thread about whether you play with infinite height.

I made this into a poll. If gamers prefer playing Doom as it was made or with mods, either is ok. c:

What a stupid question.

1 minute ago, Scotty said:

What a stupid question.

If you don't like it, then why are you even here?

To point out how dumb a question it is. If you look around this site for literally seconds you'll see that people of course still love classic Doom.

7 minutes ago, Scotty said:

To point out how dumb a question it is. If you look around this site for literally seconds you'll see that people of course still love classic Doom.

It was a thought I had. I was wondering if there are those who just love it because of the mods and don't like the vanilla gameplay.

Here on Doomworld you're likely to see a skew towards "without mods". Generally we're a pretty traditionalist bunch here. If you ran this over on say the Doom Subreddit or the Zandronum forums you'd likely see quite different results. 

Personally, I've tried a few mods, and the only one that I found purely improved the experience was the Minor Sprite Fixing Project. 

22 minutes ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

It was a thought I had. I was wondering if there are those who just love it because of the mods and don't like the vanilla gameplay.

I think it depends a lot on how you define mod, or rather where you draw the line.

Features that come with source ports already venture into modding the way people can play classic doom by adding things like jumping and free-aim etc, but also wider field of view, and HUDs which display more information than id gave originally. Even though it might seem like a stretch at first, one could argue that most people play classic doom modded at least slightly for that reason alone.

Straight up gameplay modding is a different beast, but even there the lines have become somewhat "blurry", because custom monsters are part of many sets of maps. Valiant, scythe and more transformative maps like Umbra of fate come to mind.

To answer the actual question, I don't use mods unless the author of a map states that the map has been designed for use with "mod XY" as a default. And mods that enhance graphics even further than source ports do are simply not my cup of tea, even though "bloom" can look really neat.

11 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I think it depends a lot on how you define mod, or rather where you draw the line.

Mods such as gameplay mechanics, weapons, skins, etc.

i really can't play classic doom myself, though i loved it back in the day, but then games like Duke Nukem and Blood just kicked it's ass... not to mention i was playing quakeworld to

that's sometimes the conflict here... us lot who came back pretty much because of brutal doom :)

i can't play vanilla doom anymore, it's just laborious, everything's a bullet sponge, the AI doesn't really do anything.... 

furthermore when i recommend to others my new hobby i tell them to get Brutal/PB and recommend an epic megawad (helbound atm)... this will make the best impression on them, they can try vanilla later.... they'll likely stick with Brutal


Sorry for this treason, but we all have opinions! (i voted with mods only)

edit: downvote for jumping though, that new doom game should have not added jump and crouch, what's the point in jump and crouch?

6 minutes ago, DarkShroom said:

that new doom game should have not added jump and crouch, what's the point in jump and crouch?

Why shouldn't it, adds bit of depth to the gameplay, and is well taken advantage of since the levels are also designed with these in mind. I don't see the harm in it, granted the Classic games levels aren't designed with these in mind but that's not an excuse for the new game to not have it.

10 minutes ago, tempdecal.wad said:

 

Why shouldn't it, adds bit of depth to the gameplay, and is well taken advantage of since the levels are also designed with these in mind. I don't see the harm in it, granted the Classic games levels aren't designed with these in mind but that's not an excuse for the new game to not have it.

well okay... it's a decision, but it seemed like a missed opportunity to define the game as "doom" and not "quake" to me

jumping is something standard in games i wish people would rethink, it can make multiplayer so laborious

I can think of 3 of my favorite games of all time, they lost jump and are much better off for it: Swat 3/4, OP and Arma, Heroes of Stalingrad... granted they're all tactical shooters where this might make more sense... still i wish someone would think of the way Doom decided not to have jumping

49 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I think it depends a lot on how you define mod, or rather where you draw the line.

 

Features that come with source ports already venture into modding the way people can play classic doom by adding things like jumping and free-aim etc, but also wider field of view, and HUDs which display more information than id gave originally. Even though it might seem like a stretch at first, one could argue that most people play classic doom modded at least slightly for that reason alone.

 

Straight up gameplay modding is a different beast, but even there the lines have become somewhat "blurry", because custom monsters are part of many sets of maps. Valiant, scythe and more transformative maps like Umbra of fate come to mind.

To be honest, I didn't even think of the HUD thing. Yeah, it's very difficult to define what is a MOD.

Probably the better way is to put whether you would like to play IWADs/PWADs the intended way although it's still not perfect.

Some of the MODs like Smooth Doom or Beautiful Doom, they basically modify the effects, but keep the original experience. However, sometimes you don't even need to load to MOD to "mod" a game, such as using (G)ZDoom, or even PrBoom+ in wrong complevel.

I wouldn't consider DooM to be the best FPS of all time but definitely a fantastic game, even in 2018. I mostly play dooM with mods just to mess about with them but sometimes doing a full run vanilla style can be fun, especially if you challenges like "No shotgun" runs or "pacifism" runs of either levels or full episodes.

anything goes in my opinion so I pick both.

I play both. I mostly play with mods, but when trying out a classic WAD I don't know, I'll give it a go straight with no mods to get the best idea of the mapper's intentions.

With mods, but nothing that drastically alters the core gameplay. I'll still play without just because I can.

I like both vanilla and modded. Doesn't mean I like it with mods that add a million weapon\monster type, those are usually a mess I'd rather stray far from. I don't like replaying the Iwads anymore since I've already done them enough for a life time. 

classic doom is da best