Would you pay for an OG Doom expansion if it were to be released by Bethesda?

[Maes]

12 minutes ago, SOSU said:

@Maes I meant just making new free episodes but what you say is cool too :D

 

Even the reduced approach of making new episodes would soon prompt a reality check: should they be just keep on making something like No Rest for the Living, aka a merely limit-removing, quite oldschool mapset, running on a token "source port"? If that approach had worked/was believed viable, wouldn't they have repeated it by now, since resource-wise it would be the least demanding one? And yet it's been 6 years since Doom 3: BFG edition bundled those maps...

 

Make them for an advanced source port? Which one? Make their own? Or mod for an existing one? And again this brings the "cannot beat source ports (and their modding communities) at their own game" argument at the forefront.

 

Not to mention, even if the first approach was considered viable, well, it would probably cause some kind of Final Doom-like controversy at one point or another. For good or bad, the Doom community as we know it here on DW is quite demanding. It's one thing to please news sites who want nothing more than a good "comeback", "rebirth" etc. story, it's another whole ballgame to please the hardcore crowd here.

 

For now they seem to have avoided those issues by having none else than John Romero himself make the maps, and by playing on scarcity (one NRFTL-type release every 6 years).

[Loud Silence]

Never ever. We have hundreds or thousands of megawads/expansions made by incredible people of Doom community.

[pulkmees]

WTF ? Of course yes. They have experience making levels already. Granted not OG Doom maps, but still, they know a thing or two. 

No if it's not free. I'd rather play someone's passion project than something they want money for.

 

EDIT: Ah, that was the original question, didn't read properly..

Edited December 11, 2018 by pulkmees

[NaturalTvventy]

8 hours ago, Spie812 said:

I think the answer to this just takes a quick look back to No End in Sight. A commercial add-on made by people unrelated to the original devs made decades later, but it is still an absolutely awesome set of maps that are well worth the small payment. I think that if Bethesda could show that they were creating something of similar quality, then I'd gladly pay a bit for it.

Hmmm? For the record NEIS wasn’t a commercial product. I’m assuming you’ve confused it with maybe Final Doom? 

[NaturalTvventy]

Hells to the yes I’d pay for a Doom add-on. Am I in the miroity in believing professional game developers are just better at making maps than us hobbiests? 

Edited December 11, 2018 by NaturalTvventy

[Catpho]

8 minutes ago, NaturalTvventy said:

Hmmm? For the record NEIS wasn’t a commercial product. I’m assuming you’ve confused it with maybe Final Doom? 

I think @Spie812 confused it for No Rest For The Living.

[Nine Inch Heels]

I feel like I'm at odds with myself with regards to the question.

Would I lay down money for an official classic doom iWAD (iWAD being key here)? Sure I would, why not?

Would I give my money to bethesda willingly? No, I don't like that idea at all, out of principle.

 

I'm thankful that this is only a hypothetical dilemma at this point, to be honest.

[Dark Pulse]

Only if they provide the usual Bethesda quality by ensuring they give me a WAD that crashes like clockwork every five minutes or so.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

It would really depend on how it's done, I suppose.

 

- On a CD-ROM?  Sure, I went for the Sigil box (though only the standard edition, I don't care to spend a huge amount extra just to add in some silly knicknacks) for that because why would I not when I've shelled out so much money for silly shovelware WAD compilations too.

- As a paid DLC?  I dunno.  Maybe.  Depends on price/quality, I'm not a huge fan of the whole DLC thing but I do buy them if the price is right, for the few games I have that have them.

- As part of some sort of re-release?  I'd be pretty wary about this.  No Rest for the Living never enticed me enough to go out and buy whatever wacky console port it was that had it.  And I'm less than trusting about any sort of revamp after the whole Doom 3 Broken Fucking Garbage Edition fiasco.

- From Bethesda?  Ehhhhh.  They're about as official to Doom as anything Atari-branded these days is official to the Atari that made the 2600.  And don't have a great reputation to boot especially right now, though I've never been interested enough in Elder Scrolls or Fallout to have personal experience with that.  Romero making new levels is a whole other kettle of fish in that regards, I never really got the cultish adulation for him, but he is one of the original "Doom gods".  But if it's good it's good and if it's not good... I might be curious anyway if the other circumstances were right.

[bioshockfan90]

I don't think I would, given the direction Bethesda's been heading lately. Had this been Bethesda pre-Skyrim I probably would've, but... don't think they had the rights to DOOM at that point.

 

I'd probably have to see a trailer and look at who it was made by. With something like SIGIL I can get behind it more easily regardless of quality, because, well... not every week you get a new set of Romero maps, but if it's just being made by some Bethesda level designers or someone on here, I'd really have to consider if it's worth supporting. I mean hell, we have Eviternity, BTSX, The Adventures of Square, Ancient Aliens, etc... and those are all free!

 

I assure you though that if this ever happens there's gonna be a lot of debating on this site though. :p

[TheMightyHeracross]

11 hours ago, Nevander said:

If they found a legal way to sell Doom expansions, community projects would be in trouble. I hope they don't do this.

 

It'd be the end of the Doom modding community as we know it!

 

Anyway, people are again forgetting that, in Doom's case, Bethesda is the publisher, not the developer; the expansion would have been developed by id Software, who I would trust infinitely more than Bethesda Game Studios to create a commercial add-on. So why not?

[ReaperAA]

1 hour ago, NaturalTvventy said:

Am I in the miroity in believing professional game developers are just better at making maps then us hobbiests? 

 

YES. U r in minority.

 

29 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Would I lay down money for an official classic doom iWAD (iWAD being key here)? Sure I would, why not?

 

Why for an IWAD?

[Firedust]

Yeah, I guess I should've clarified that Bethesda would take on the role of the publisher and not necessarily the developer in this case.

[Nine Inch Heels]

4 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

Why for an IWAD

Because iWADs, to me personally, are very valuable since they act as resources for pWADs. So any iWAD that delivers new resources (especially monsters and weapons is what I'm interested in since we fortunately have amazing texture artists), might open up entirely new ways for everybody to build and enjoy maps with mechanics that were previously unavailable to us outside of heavily modded GZDoom.wads. It's also going to be relevant for speedrunning, assuming PrBoom+ can be made compatible with new the assets, because nearly all speedruns are done from vanilla-doom up to MBF-format, since GZDoom doesn't care about preserving demos at all.

 

In short: A new iWAD that has just one new weapon and one or maybe two new monsters would get me hyped almost as much as ordering a pair of Manolo Blahnik "Hangisis", and that's saying something because those cost around 900$.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Nine Inch Heels

[Gunstar Green]

I mean... Romero's episode is free. You're really only paying for the collectibles, an autograph and the Buckethead music if you want them.

 

I guess my answer would be, it depends. If I'm paying for it I'd prefer it be something new like what 3D Realms is doing with Ion Maiden rather than it just be a level pack like Sigil which is fine because it's free.

[Xaser]

In the super-rare chance something like this ever happens, I imagine there's a likelihood that the development would be done by community mappers, since pretty much all the official Doom expansions sans E4 and NRFTL are some form of this.

 

For those of you who gave a hard "no" with the reasoning that the community yields better output for free, would you change your answer if you found out it was developed by your favorite mapper(s)?

[TheMightyHeracross]

5 minutes ago, Xaser said:

For those of you who gave a hard "no" with the reasoning that the community yields better output for free, would you change your answer if you found out it was developed by your favorite mapper(s)?

 

There would probably be another huge backlash about the mappers in question being "sellouts," like with TNT.

[Firedust]

12 minutes ago, Xaser said:

For those of you who gave a hard "no" with the reasoning that the community yields better output for free, would you change your answer if you found out it was developed by your favorite mapper(s)?

I certainly wouldn't mind if it the mappack was done by my favourite doomworld people. I don't think it's a question of selling out anyways. Game studios, music artists... They don't actually see that much money from the sales, and I can imagine that that number isn't going to be particulary high given the size of this community. Even if Bethesda decide to invest some money into a bona fide marketing campaign.

[Xaser]

10 minutes ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

 

There would probably be another huge backlash about the mappers in question being "sellouts," like with TNT.

Undoubtedly some feathers would get ruffled, though as a bit of semi-fairness, part of the issue with TNT (IIRC, anyway) was that the mod was pretty hyped up before it went commercial, so lots of folks felt like they'd gotten a raw deal (not that I agree with the reaction, mind you). We'd definitely see the same thing happen if, say, we suddenly decided to sell The Adventures of Square Episode 3* after making the first two freebies.

 

I'm mostly curious to know what would happen if a hypothetical project were started as a commercial thing, though I suspect we can probably draw some parallels to DUSK, Ion Maiden, Amid Evil, et.al for that one.

 

[*Disclaimer: we will never do this.]

[Firedust]

I'm pretty sure people would pay for a game based on the doom engine if it's good enough. Didn't see anyone complaining about Ion Maiden. Haven't heard of the other two.

[NaturalTvventy]

29 minutes ago, Xaser said:

Undoubtedly some feathers would get ruffled, though as a bit of semi-fairness, part of the issue with TNT (IIRC, anyway) was that the mod was pretty hyped up before it went commercial, so lots of folks felt like they'd gotten a raw deal (not that I agree with the reaction, mind you). We'd definitely see the same thing happen if, say, we suddenly decided to sell The Adventures of Square Episode 3* after making the first two freebies.

Personally I was ticked about Final Doom because I paid 50 bucks upon release in anticipation of an iWad-quality product and got a pack of garbage.

 

 

29 minutes ago, Xaser said:

I'm mostly curious to know what would happen if a hypothetical project were started as a commercial thing, though I suspect we can probably draw some parallels to DUSK, Ion Maiden, Amid Evil, et.al for that one.

 

[*Disclaimer: we will never do this.]

That’s too bad! I think it’d be challenging to try to make a commercial-grade product a-la NRFTL and see what happens. See if anyone actually buys the thing. Make it free after a year or something (not that free versions wouldn’t be easy to obtain anyways). I’m assuming legal reasons would prevent this but it’d be a fun experiment.

[Rathori]

51 minutes ago, Xaser said:

For those of you who gave a hard "no" with the reasoning that the community yields better output for free, would you change your answer if you found out it was developed by your favorite mapper(s)?

 

As one of these people, I feel like I have to answer :P And the answer is: Yes, I most definitely would.

 

The original question, however, was about a Bethesda product, and there's no chance in hell they'll ever manage to make anything good without the help of Doom community or the original devs. The reasoning behind this is that it takes a mapper who knows the game itself, its players and what they value about and/or want from a WAD. IMO no "professional level designer" can make a good Doom level (let alone WAD) if they aren't a Doom fan and have no previous experience making maps for it.

 

So yeah, if they announced something like "we hired <insert your favourite community mappers' names> to make an official expansion to the original DOOM", I'd be among the first in line to get it.

[Xaser]

For the record, the "never" comment was in regards to Square specifically. Not that I'm hinting at anything, mind you. :P

[Gunstar Green]

42 minutes ago, Firedust said:

I'm pretty sure people would pay for a game based on the doom engine if it's good enough. Didn't see anyone complaining about Ion Maiden. Haven't heard of the other two.

They're not made with old engines like Ion Maiden but they're old-school inspired FPS. Amid Evil gives me Hexen meets Unreal vibes.

 

DUSK just had its finished release this week on Steam, it's a heavily Quake inspired game with Blood-style flavoring.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

1 hour ago, Xaser said:

For those of you who gave a hard "no" with the reasoning that the community yields better output for free, would you change your answer if you found out it was developed by your favorite mapper(s)?

 

If their work has nothing to do with Bethesda (Especially Todd Howard) then sure, Even a kickstarter funding!

[Noiser]

1 hour ago, Xaser said:

For those of you who gave a hard "no" with the reasoning that the community yields better output for free, would you change your answer if you found out it was developed by your favorite mapper(s)?

 

YEEEEZZ BRING IT ON

 

[ImpieEyez95]

No, based on the ethics of community made things are free, and have been since we've had editors for the game. If bethesda did something like this - they would try to scrounge up every last dime and nickel - putting every future community pack/ level etc, under a paywall (which could honestly get pretty expensive very quickly depending on how much one Dooms) 

Either way it's a no.

 

Keep it free, it's how it should be. I'll support the Original Developers any day though (Maps made by them etc) 

[silentzorah]

If it was direct from iD, or some of its former developers, yes.

 

Bethesda, no.  No, no, no.  Ew.  Just, no.

[TheMightyHeracross]

8 minutes ago, ImpieEyez95 said:

If bethesda did something like this - they would try to scrounge up every last dime and nickel - putting every future community pack/ level etc, under a paywall (which could honestly get pretty expensive very quickly depending on how much one Dooms) 

 

How would Bethesda go about "putting every future community pack" under a paywall? That's ridiculous.

 

I gave plenty of examples earlier of community-made WADs being distributed commercially without these apocalyptic consequences that you're predicting. There is no way Bethesda would ever be able to pull that off even if they wanted. 

[SaladBadger]

15 hours ago, Nevander said:

If they found a legal way to sell Doom expansions, community projects would be in trouble. I hope they don't do this.

I'm pretty sure beth has the legal ability to do whatever the fuck they want with Doom. if they want to replace E1M1 with a version that's just FUCK YOU written out in sector letters, they probably can. Dumping some official new release with a new levelset seems entirely possible.

 

In any case, it'd have to be a particularly good levelset, and having community members involved would be a nice incentive (though I don't imagine they'd make a whole lot off of it, honestly). Long-time mappers getting paid is always cool, but I'm just in a weird position where I don't feel particularly thrilled about the idea of giving Beth money right now. hmm.