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CrazyDoomguy

Doom lost popularity?

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This topic is just for question and philosophy thinking.

 

I think, the popularity of doom falls because players are already reluctant to play in doom. From this conclusion it makes no any sense to build new Wads and Megawads. I already build own Megawad, but I feel something pointless... What do you think?

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While I have no stats to hand, I actually think thanks to Doom 2016 the community has seen a big increase in new players.

 

What makes you think the popularity of the game is falling?

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What makes you think the popularity of the game is falling?

I did one WAD "VeryHard". I know that this WAD havent big popularity because of extreme difficulty. But I saw 27 download approximate last years and today the number of downloads stay the same. No anything increased althought +1... Another good WAD for examples "doomworld mega project 2017" have 111 downloads. Earlier how I remember was 76 downloads. The impression that there no much excitement. I create new megawad and I asked for testing - nobody answers. That make me thinking.

 

Or is it because of me. I have lost interest in the game because a lot of irritation. There is too much unfairnes in game like CSS or LoL. The decisive factor is not your skill, but the power of the computer (CPU and graphic card) and the Internet.

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There are more doomers beyond this forum. More than you can imagine. And yeah, there more maps than people can play it. I wouldn't say that community is dying, more snores in eternal paradise. 

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I don't think it's dying. It can be a natural process though but no.....Doom will last more than you think.

50 minutes ago, CrazyDoomguy said:

I did one WAD "VeryHard". I know that this WAD havent big popularity because of extreme difficulty. But I saw 27 download approximate last years and today the number of downloads stay the same. No anything increased althought +1... Another good WAD for examples "doomworld mega project 2017" have 111 downloads. Earlier how I remember was 76 downloads. The impression that there no much excitement. I create new megawad and I asked for testing - nobody answers. That make me thinking.

Simple answer....just a matter of tastes man, one can choose what can play or not instead of not to feel obligated to play that specific wad. That's how it is.

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I've been here for thirteen years (damn you Bauul - you were here when i was just 12!)

 

I have not seen as much activity in the past as I have in more recent times. In addition, I am seeing a higher quantity of higher quality wads now than I did 10 years ago.

 

I also have a feeling the number is a little bit off.. There are other outlets to get the wad files such as moddb, mirrors among other sites.

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I think with the new Doom plus Brutal Doom 64 a lot of new players are playing doom.

I still love the first original the best. But they are all good in their own way.

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Honestly I would agree with everyone else 
(I have nothing to add)

Since I am on the newer spectrum of Doom fans since I didn't get hardcore into Doom till 2017, community seems fine to me

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There's always been a lot of players, mappers etc for as long as I can remember and there's still a ton as of this post. I'm really glad the Doom community has always been so active and if anything we've seen an uptick in activity since ~2015. It's awesome.

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4 hours ago, CrazyDoomguy said:

I create new megawad and I asked for testing - nobody answers. That make me thinking.

Here's why:

4 hours ago, CrazyDoomguy said:

I did one WAD "VeryHard". I know that this WAD havent big popularity because of extreme difficulty.

To add to that, you didn't do a particularly good job of listening to feedback when you made VHard, you simply told people they'd need to "git gud", even though you yourself could only beat your own maps with excessive save/load spamming or TAS-features. So, speaking only for myself here, that background doesn't make me want to discuss your maps with you.

 

 

4 hours ago, CrazyDoomguy said:

Another good WAD for examples "doomworld mega project 2017" have 111 downloads.

I don't think there's any issue at all. Classic Doom is niche such as it is, MegaWads like SunLust are at around 300 downloads, Valiant has 217 downloads.... What did you expect? Over 10,000 downloads?

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To be honest, Classic Doom (I assume you're talking about this) is not popular (relatively) at all. Just like NIH said, it's a niche.

 

Doing speedrun is not for the number of downloads, but for our own special interest. You can see the demo forum is under special interest, so you should expect this as a niche rather than something very popular, especially Chillax being way less recognizable than Doom/Doom 2. Also, creating maps, or MegaWADs is another thing where community likes to do this or whatnot. If you don't think creating a MegaWAD is a good idea, just stop it, but don't say this isn't necessary for others.

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5 hours ago, Bauul said:

While I have no stats to hand, I actually think thanks to Doom 2016 the community has seen a big increase in new players.


This definitely applies to me. Before 2016 came out, I always had an interest in playing the classic games. I pre-ordered it on XBone, and it came with the ports of the original two games. Played through E1 and liked it a lot, but always wanted to play them the way they were meant to be played, on PC. So, this past summer Steam sale, picked up Ultimate, II, Master, and Final for $5 with a deep interest in the modding/online community. I played through Ult. and II to get my bearings, and I've been playing online a lot. I honestly am in love with the originals, probably my favorite FPS games. I think most of the younger generation is just too fixated on playing whatever the new release is. People hearing too that there's like, "a little work to be done" when you start playing DooM (getting ports, finding WADs, ect.,) maybe scares them off, even though it's a fairly simple process. 

Just my two cents. In summation, I think 2016 probably did bring some new faces to the community, at least people willing to break down the "wall" of entry.

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I definitely agree that Doom(at least, the classics) are definitely a niche, but I also feel that it's not neccisarily a bad thing. If anything, it creates a more tight-knit community, as we can all relate to each other just based off of part of this shared hobby we have. It brings us together in a way, rather than other, more mainstream communities, where there's many more people that aren't truly invested in the community as most classic doom players are.

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@CrazyDoomguy Maybe it's where the Wads are hosted. My small little Wad gets at least 1 download every day and it was posted a while ago in moddb.

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I'm surprised to see the small download numbers on some of the idgames files, but I think that's only been tracked since 2015 or something, meaning the vast majority of download numbers have been lost. It's still a bit of a shocker though, on my mediafire page, Revenge of the 90s has gotten about 700 downloads since 2012, not even counting the additional downloads from idgames, TSPG and various other wad hosting sites. If a not-so-popular wad can manage numbers like that I'm sure the many many truly quality wads out there have tens of thousands of downloads.

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6 hours ago, CrazyDoomguy said:

I create new megawad and I asked for testing - nobody answers.

 

When your identity is once cursed by obscurity, there is no way back. People didnt accept something about you and they started to ignore you FOREVER. It happens. But there is a fix.

What you have to do is to create new identity (= new DW account) and make new wads under different nickname, with no connection to anything you have previously done. Dont do big project, just try to make one map and ask for feedback = people's interest should come back. You are on internet, so why not to take advantage of anonymity? Savescum identites until you dont find the working way to present stuff :) and chill 8-) You have as many tries as you want.

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@CrazyDoomguy

 

I have no clue where you get the idea that Doom's popularity is falling.

For once, the mere fact that they made Doom 2016 tells us that the brand name still means a lot.

And despite all the negativity toward it, a mod like Brutal Doom will certainly ensure that new players will come in - but in all honesty - if they were to post on an internet forum I'd rather expect them to join one that's a bit less conservative than Doomworld.

 

All that said, I agree with anyone saying that classic Doom is a niche, but it's hard to put an approximation of the amount of users on it because we have no numbers on most download offers. My guess is in the low 100.000's.

 

1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

I'm surprised to see the small download numbers on some of the idgames files, but I think that's only been tracked since 2015 or something, meaning the vast majority of download numbers have been lost.

 

I'm not really that surprised. If the Doomworld wrapper around the archive is counting the downloads it is only counting those actually using that wrapper, but not those who use an ftp client, the old Doomworld interface or some direct link to one of the mirrors, e.g. for regularly downloading /newstuff.

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I think sometimes it comes in waves. When DOOM 3 came out that's when I actually got back into the original games and started playing mods for the first time. I had loved DOOM for years before that.

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Something wrong with idgames? moddb Classic Doom mods get at least 5 - 10 downloads a day (most of them anyways).

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3 hours ago, NinjaLiquidator said:

What you have to do is to create new identity (= new DW account) and make new wads under different nickname, with no connection to anything you have previously done. Dont do big project, just try to make one map and ask for feedback = people's interest should come back. You are on internet, so why not to take advantage of anonymity? Savescum identites until you dont find the working way to present stuff :) and chill 8-) You have as many tries as you want.

The way I hear it, sockpuppeting is not something that goes entirely unnoticed on DoomWorld, and if I were you, I wouldn't even think about advocating "measures" like this publically, let alone suggest them to somebody like CrazyDoomGuy whose writing "style" is easy enough to recognize.

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DooM losing popularity?

 

Never.

 

I've been playing DooM for well over a decade but only just joined the online community and It's been the most welcoming and helpful community I've ever been a part of. As long as that remains true and DooM Eternal does well, It'll live for a long while yet.

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After Doom 2016 I think the community got some good boost. About the project not having good download numbers, I think this is more due to competition (lots of very good stuff out there recently) and probably those wads didn't feel appealing for most people. I've also done several wads that didn't past > 100 downloads. (and, tbh, most of them aren't that good). IMO, if the wad doesn't get too much popularity, it ends being forgotten quickly in the idarchives and it won't probably be downloaded again except if something happens. It happens to every store/archives, though.

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If anything, I'd say the opposite; Doom is an anomaly in how enduring its popularity has been.  Most other games that old have only small communities if they have communities at all, while every year since '94 there's been a stream of Doom wad releases, sometimes waxing, sometimes waning, but never really stopping.  People were saying Doom was going to die as early as 1996 when Quake was coming along, but if this is death, it's a slow and blissful one.

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As far as Doom fans go, I think I am even more in a niche than most of them as I am mostly a Doom 64 fan. I am surprised to see fans still talking about it when ID posts about Doom Eternal. I think people around my age (mid-30s) have nostalgia for Doom and will keep going back to it in cycles, especially when ID keeps putting them out. Now when we start dying off, I wonder if people will still keep it going?

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Thing is, it's hard to attract a new, young audience with a primitive engine that is the Doom engine. Sure, sourceports like (G)ZDoom push the limits and allow for modelling but what makes Doom, well, Doom, is 2D sprites in a 3D environment. Not much people like what embodies Doom, so Doom's an acquired taste.

 

Doom 4 breathed some fresh air into the Doom community, and spawned a new generation of modders - myself included, though I knew about (and played) Doom far before Doom 4, it's just that it sparked some interest for the classics in me when it came out.

 

Doom was never really popular save for '93 and '94, but when true 3D games started coming out (Quake and Quake II) as well as FPS games which focus on story (Half-Life), Doom started losing its appeal.

 

What draws people back to Doom is the fact that it's easily moddable, some people find it fun to push the limits of an old engine and see what it can do, some people still have a soft spot for Doom and some people enjoy ripping and tearing.

 

It's fairly large for a game that's over 20 years old, too. Some games are lucky to be over 10 years old and still be kicking, but Doom is a gift that keeps on giving.

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4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I think that's only been tracked since 2015 or something

 

I think it's way more recent than that.  I believe the current download figures are from the site redesign, which was what, a year ago? 

 

The fact those big megawads are still getting that many downloads shows the endurance of the community.  

 

My most downloaded map is up to 8,600 downloads and only came out in 2016.

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My 0.02$ on the matter:

 

I think with all the new Doom games coming out the series is only getting more and more popular, and frankly mods such as Brutal Doom likely play a part in this as well.

 

Besides, new maps and megawads are still being created regularly and things don't seem to slow down. Perhaps Doom is not as popular as other games, but it still is very much alive and has an active and devoted community. For how old it is, I guess it's safe to say it withstood the test of time.

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12 hours ago, CrazyDoomguy said:

[...] Another good WAD for examples "doomworld mega project 2017" have 111 downloads.

 

Well wad files are usually spread to a lot of different places. I usualy pick up my stuff at ID games and doomworld... but lately people like to put them on moddb etc.

As a DOOM player of the first generation (heck, I am still having the same favourtie game for over 20 years by now!) I rather find the scene more and more interesting. It is, as said, a niche but its a awesome niche of dedicated people and a constant flow of great releases. In the last 3 years w've had great wads and mega wads like "Sunlust" "Back to Saturn 1+2" and right now this one.

I just don't think that i.e DMP2017 is in the same league. It does have a very nice hub and stuff.... but after all it is just a wild collection of so-and-so levels. No story, no progression, no coherence. And thus it is less interesting to play and... because of that: Less downloads (Just in my opinion of course). Just for myself I hope DOOM will live for ever. I want to keep my hobby until I retire myself in another 20 or 30 years ;)

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