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Job

The Staying Power of Classic Doom vs Modern Doom Titles

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This question has been on my mind since the release of Doom Eternal. Having played it, and 2016 as well, I never considered this until recently. Imagine for a moment, that Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal existed somehow, in a vacuum and within their own context, outside of classic Doom. Although they borrow heavily from our beloved 90s era Doom, a great deal of their features, approaches to gameplay, etcetera, are unique. 

 

Without leaning upon a name that carries the weight of nostalgia, a preexisting fan base and corresponding legitimacy, would these games create their own lasting legacy? Doom was the first to the table in helping bring a new genre (although not necessarily creating it, as some may intimate) to the forefront of public attention, and that was a contributing factor in its legendary status. Would 2016 and Eternal stand on their own or be forgotten within 15 months of product cycle, lost to memory as another "me too?" 

 

I have my own opinion, but I'm more interested in hearing yours. 

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there is a reason they used Doom name to boost their sales. because those games are nothing special, they shine only because they aren't "modern military shooters". while it is great that somebody dared to make something that is not "black call of dutyfield", it is still not enough to be a greate game. not even enough to be a good game, tbh. modern dooms are slightly better than their competitors, but that's still far from being good.

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Really? Not even "good"? "Far from being good" actually? I think you undervalue them just "a bit".

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yep. mediocre shooters, not bad, not good. the engine is nice, but that's mostly all they have to offer. nothing i would want to replay even in a year. actually, nothing i would want to replay at all. also, idiotic "upgrade" mechanic in eternal throws it back to "i don't even want to complete it."

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There's zero replayability in the modern titles for me. Outside of my dislike for Eternal, I would at least give it a chance if there was a modding scene for it, or even give me the SnapMap from 2016. Alas, no. It seems like more and more devs are extremely reluctant to hand out the SDK for their games and harbor a healthy modding community. I find it laughable Id and Bethesda have added in a Fortnite-esque battlepass mechanic to Eternal like unlocking a skin for a Mancubus that I can only play in an extremely shitty multiplayer mode will make me want to play the campaign again. Doom 1. 2 and even 3 to an extent have countless hours of modded fun behind them you forget you're even playing Doom sometimes. The modern titles lack this in spades, and I doubt this will change with future installations.

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I haven't actually played any Doom games newer than Doom 3 so my opinion may be worthless. But I think at least partly why classic Doom has so much staying power is the fact you can run it on almost anything, its simple to learn but impossible to master gameplay, and its modability.

 

Though the aesthetics are going to be inherently dated, there are gameplay mods that someone used to modern FPSs will find entertaining. Gameplay mods aside, the mapping scene alone is enough to provide a variety of fresh and exciting experiences. I'm always finding myself impressed with the work people are putting out.

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21 minutes ago, Tony_Danza_the_boss said:

I would at least give it a chance if there was a modding scene for it, or even give me the SnapMap from 2016. Alas, no. It seems like more and more devs are extremely reluctant to hand out the SDK for their games and harbor a healthy modding community

The executive producer of the game said that mod support will eventually arrive, and claimed the dev team have tried their best to make the engine more mod-friendly. Who knows, you may give the game another chance once this arrives.

Quote

"We've actually done things technically that are getting us closer to doing mod support, but it won't be immediate," Stratton says. "I think longer term. We made technical decisions years ago that we're still moving away from, and they're getting us closer to those kinds of things." 

Source: https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/2019/06/14/id-talks-mod-support-integrating-more-traversal-and-the-controversial-neon-ui

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this is just a polite corporate way to say "GTFO".

 

p.s.: i am still waiting for Rage engine sources. Carmack said that they will be published, and nobody told they won't since. i guess i can expect "newdoom modding" arrive in the same box.

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1 minute ago, ketmar said:

this is just a polite corporate way to say "GTFO".

I believe this isn't the case here, considering that some members of the new id regularly hang out with gaming outlets and fans. 

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I think that a great chunk of those who came to the fandom because of Eternal and praised it to no end at launch and before with meme viral marketing will soon go on with their lives.
I find the last two games pretty good despite some flaws but i think they don't have the legacy potential of classic Doom.
I agree that modding has also a lot to do with it.
Maybe i'm wrong but it seems to me that some of the younger folks in the fandom view classic Doom as the cooler Minecraft somehow.

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It's hard to say because the environment is so different now. Back then, there was really nothing like Doom, Wolf3D being the closest but still being clearly inferior (in technical terms, not trying to shit on Wolf3D).

 

Nowdays there are a million and one "reasonably enjoyable games with nice looking graphics and large worlds to explore" (well, that's what I've been lead to believe anyway and what the current gaming market suggests, none of them interest me personally). If I take the word on the street at face value, the new Dooms stand so far apart from their peers solely due to not being slow military shooters, and that speaks pretty poorly on behalf of the genre.

 

Being two of the only modern games I've put any time into at all, I'd say they are most certainly "pretty darn good" games and the amount of effort put into them is apparent. Even as a person distant from modern stuff, there's definitely some fun to be had there.

 

I don't think they'll have the power that Classic Doom had and has - that's basically impossible to attain because the age they come from was so primitive, relatively speaking. The difference in what was expected from a game then VS what one "needs" now is vast. Oversaturation makes standing out harder than ever before. With all that established, I'm just happy with them actually being decent and being seen as "omgamazing" by the younger crowd, because the trickle-up effect means some of those NuDoom fans will surely come around to the Old Dooms and inject even more fresh blood into the aging supply.

 

 

..but, in an alternate universe where more devs/studios realize we can use this tech to create

interesting, new, bold takes on tired, old genres that have been done to death 999999x times before - the 2 new Dooms are "still good, but middle of the road".

I got so bored with 99.99% of the stuff coming out from 2006-2010 that my will to give a single damn about any (high budget) games was completely killed and hasn't been resurrected since. I've been excited for a total of 5 games in the last 15 years.

 

I'd love to see a creative renaissance among high-budget studios, particularly in the realm of FPS games. A willingness to try different and unique things and take the risk on bold ideas that may fail. Everything high-budget for the last 10-15 years just plays it so safe and so styrofoam and stale and just... Bleh. Yeah, they look OK I guess. Just give me a new property doing things I haven't seen a million times before already!!

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1 hour ago, ketmar said:

yep. mediocre shooters, not bad, not good. the engine is nice, but that's mostly all they have to offer. nothing i would want to replay even in a year. actually, nothing i would want to replay at all. also, idiotic "upgrade" mechanic in eternal throws it back to "i don't even want to complete it."

I guess replayability is not something I'm looking for so much in games anymore. With so many games out there, that I barely have time to play even once, I don't even want to replay things. With that said, certain older titles that have this childhood charm for me, I still replay from time to time.

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6 hours ago, Job said:

This question has been on my mind since the release of Doom Eternal. Having played it, and 2016 as well, I never considered this until recently. Imagine for a moment, that Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal existed somehow, in a vacuum and within their own context, outside of classic Doom. Although they borrow heavily from our beloved 90s era Doom, a great deal of their features, approaches to gameplay, etcetera, are unique. 

 

Without leaning upon a name that carries the weight of nostalgia, a preexisting fan base and corresponding legitimacy, would these games create their own lasting legacy? Doom was the first to the table in helping bring a new genre (although not necessarily creating it, as some may intimate) to the forefront of public attention, and that was a contributing factor in its legendary status. Would 2016 and Eternal stand on their own or be forgotten within 15 months of product cycle, lost to memory as another "me too?" 

 

I have my own opinion, but I'm more interested in hearing yours. 

I doubt they will create much of a lasting legacy even with the Doom name.  The legacy they might have is in influencing other games -- Doom 2016 in particular made it clear that you could still make a AAA shooter that was not trying to be an interactive action film in 2016 and sell volume.

 

As for Eternal, while the better game, it's also less subversive in its context than D16 was. Most of all because it travels a path D16 had to clear for itself, but also because of the Souls-ish influence and its more generic handling of story and me-too universisms.  How the same team that in D16 rebelliously skewered some of game storytelling's cliches to delivering a narrative that epitomised them in their next game baffles my brain. 

 

 

In a larger view, neither games have been truly top-level sellers on console, which is where the gaming world's centre of gravity is nowadays.  It's also a much more competitive landscape, with amazing looking games being released all the time. And finally, all games without modding are kind of on borrowed time and linear FPS games especially. First the new content dries up and the single-player fossilizes, from there the servers will one day be turned off and multiplayer will only be a memory.

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10 minutes ago, dr_st said:

I guess replayability is not something I'm looking for so much in games anymore. With so many games out there, that I barely have time to play even once, I don't even want to replay things.

you don't *have* to replay a game, but if you don't even *want* to do that... from my PoV such game is mediocre at best. and it is certainly not good. because you always want to taste good things at least one more time.

 

while there is nothing inherently wrong in "gaming fastfood", it is still fastfood. i am ok to get some fastfood for a bargain price, but for full AAA price it *have* to be something worth that money.

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Well I've played 2016 only like 1-3 hours, my own HW can't handle it. So I don't have comprehensive opinion on the newcomers. I liked it as far. Most of the time I just stared the cool details, effects ect. 

 

But why Classic? I think it's the easy and FAST "modability". I think Carmack said in one of the quakecons(?) on 200? that changing a connection between two areas in Doom3 would take a week from the team(or mapper?), when area just didn't work. I've mapped a little to Q2 & HL and even they were very slow to map to. Over the years the burden only grows. Detail levels grow. Everything gets more complicated. I wonder how much work has to be done on just a single monster model, animation.. Or even a some decorative models. Having to learn all those new toolsets all the time.. And as far as I know there is no good modding tools for most of the games at all!

 

When you get used to the "good old tools" there is very much you can get from them. On vanilla compatible side, BTSX has shown even there limits can be still pushed. All the time comes something new. Also doom editing tools evolve constantly. Recently @boris did a visual sloping tool to the Ultimate Doom Builder, which is fantastic. It speeds up things tremendously. While ZScript caused a little confusion for me at first it's great. There has been incredible stuff coming on as ZScripts.

 

As modern games take so much workhours seems like everything is slimmed to extreme. There is no room for too much of exploration or content which exists just for no reason. They are "too perfect", "too thought out". Most shooters have only hitscan enemies? Slow, repetive? I've played them so little so I might also be wrong on all of this.

 

So that's why classic. Even one person can make a whole new experience in very short time using all the content the great community has done over the years. On newer titles you NEED a team. On GZDoom or classic you can do anything you want!

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Modding has been the number 1 reason for Classic Doom's incredible success. Without the same ease of modibility where you can do anything from a simple new map to a new game, there is no way the new games will have the staying power of Classic Doom, with or without the nostalgic heritage. I believe they will still be thought of fondly by most players (myself included, even though Eternal sometimes pissed me off more than I would normally like) and maybe dusted off every now and again. But that will be it.

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21 minutes ago, ketmar said:

you don't *have* to replay a game, but if you don't even *want* to do that... from my PoV such game is mediocre at best. and it is certainly not good. because you always want to taste good things at least one more time.

 

while there is nothing inherently wrong in "gaming fastfood", it is still fastfood. i am ok to get some fastfood for a bargain price, but for full AAA price it *have* to be something worth that money.

 

Sometimes feels like everyone just wants to experience "everything" just as fast as possible. Speed is emphasized in many levels on society so it's kind of obvious then. That keeps me feeling a bit sad. Why wouldn't world stop for a while and think, feel. Consciousness shouldn't be alway "full". If it is, there is no room for creativity.

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34 minutes ago, ketmar said:

you don't *have* to replay a game, but if you don't even *want* to do that... from my PoV such game is mediocre at best. and it is certainly not good. because you always want to taste good things at least one more time.

I guess we have different points of view, because there are tons of games that I enjoyed but never wanted to replay. With Doom 2016 I actually might replay it, and I enjoy revisiting missions here and there.

 

35 minutes ago, ketmar said:

i am ok to get some fastfood for a bargain price, but for full AAA price it *have* to be something worth that money.

Ah, well, that's a different matter, and, yeah, well, I would have felt the same, I guess. 

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Note:  This is purely personal opinion, take what I say with a grain of salt.

 

I'd Say that the longevity of any game will come down to multiplayer and modding. A good multiplayer can extend the lifespan of any game from just a few extra months to Doom's current 27 years. The multiplayer for D2016 and DE are great by themselves but they do have some flaws.

 

  For example, D2016 had loadouts that, to me, were extremely unappealing. I personally think that the final nail in the coffin of D2016's multiplayer was the leveled weapon unlocks. I think that it was the feature that killed off D'16 multiplayer, because if you were late to join you would get destroyed by better players, so it becomes hard to level up and unlock anything, so the latecomers are turned off. For the experienced players the multiplayer would also start becoming boring as there will always be an optimal loadout instead of working with what you picked up. So then both new and experienced players quit and the multiplayer dies.

 

  The multiplayer of DOOM: ETERNAL just ditched leveling that affected gameplay, and instead it gives you cosmetics and shows off your skill, so they just revolved what(in my mind) was a big issue with D'16. Battlemode is great, and I'm expecting invasion mode to also be a blast. But these specialized game modes often last shorter than something like traditional DM. This is because you can memorize what each demon can do and soon have almost perfect counters to them. DM has you pitted against other players that will change playstyle based on many more factors than a player playing as a demon. i.e. You'll also have little to no idea of what weapon the opponent is carrying, you don't know the health of opponent, the "base" playstyle of the opponent, etc.

 

  So, in summary, the four largest problems are; Leveled progression, predictability, repetitiveness, and of course the lack of mods.

 

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I personally consider the new Doom games to be more-or-less modern classics, bringing back the franchise and re-imagining it for the 21st century.

 

That being said, though, the landscape nowadays is a lot more different than it was back in the '90s where literally nothing was like Doom and other genre-defining games, and the genre was not very well defined. Nowadays it's the exact opposite, and the market is also oversaturated.

 

But it isn't so much for the games themselves withstanding the test of time, than it is about their features. Let's be serious, a lot of Doom's timelessness is owed primarily to its relative ease of modding and modding capabilities, which the new games simply don't have. There's only so much experimenting with stuff that can be done in 2016 due to the limited toolset before it will inevitably get stale, and modding Eternal is still a big question. Even without modding, the games themselves are good enough to stand on their own feet thanks to their relentless and visceral combat, but it remains to be seen how they will hold up in some 10 years or so, when the landscape will once again change quite a bit from how it is right now, and how lasting will be the impact of the new games upon the industry.

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6 hours ago, Job said:

Without leaning upon a name that carries the weight of nostalgia, a preexisting fan base and corresponding legitimacy, would these games create their own lasting legacy? Doom was the first to the table in helping bring a new genre (although not necessarily creating it, as some may intimate) to the forefront of public attention, and that was a contributing factor in its legendary status. Would 2016 and Eternal stand on their own or be forgotten within 15 months of product cycle, lost to memory as another "me too?" 

 

Whether a form of entertainment can "stand on its own" is a question that gets asked for many sequels/reboots/spinoffs in many other gaming and movie franchises. The answer is almost impossible to determine. The closest we could get to answering it is examining reception towards "spiritual successors" of video games - a game inspired by an original without using its name. And there have been spiritual successors that have been recognized and successful on their own: Devil May Cry (from Resident Evil), Dark Souls (from Demon Souls), Call of Duty (from Medal of Honor: Allied Assault), Assassin's Creed (from Prince of Persia), Bioshock (from System Shock), and many others. These examples demonstrate that even without nostalgia or an established legitimacy, new and standalone games can still be critically acclaimed and successful enough to inspire their own "copy-cats" or develop their own franchises.

 

It's only been four years since the "new" Doom games have started, so I think it's a bit premature to question it's legacy. And even then, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find many modern video games with a similar impact as the original Doom (only comparable to other classic genre-definers like Street Fighter II or Super Mario Bros.). Thousands of games are released each year, the many genres have been thoroughly explored and experimented upon, and coming up with something truly unique, innovative, and still fun to play for over a quarter-century after initial launch, is challenging to say the least. There's a lot more competition these days too and it's a lot more difficult to get your own game noticed among the crowd. Classic Doom has enjoyed its staying power (aside from gameplay and world design) partly because of its accessibility and modding scene, otherwise I think it would've been treated similar to Wolfenstein 3D or Quake 1 - recognized for its influence in shaping the genre but not played much beyond that. The accessibility, modding scene, and gameplay are why Classic Doom will likely continue to be played for decades to come.

 

That said, I don't think well-received games are necessarily "forgotten" within 15 months after launch. Defining any game that doesn't popularize/form a genre as "forgotten" is a bit of a high bar to set. Plenty of people continue to return to or try out games from many years ago, even if there's no modding scene or legacy to speak of. As long as the game is good and fun, people will recommend it and pass it along. And if a would-be or even current developer enjoys it, it can lead to a form of legacy by inspiring their future designs. In that sense, if a game is well-received and recommended, I don't think that game is "forgotten". In fact, most people didn't expect much from Doom 2016 after its negatively received multiplayer beta - and Doom Eternal opened with double the launch revenue and a peak of 100k players versus 2016's peak of 30k. I doubt the extra players were from Classic fans who were buying it just for the name/nostalgia/legacy but apparently skipped 2016 - those extra players were buying the sequel likely because the last one was good and it got popular after launch.

 

I think if the modern Doom games were spiritual successors that didn't carry the name - they still would've been well-received. Maybe not as advertised as well, but they would've still been recognized and playable years after launch. I think it's too premature to determine whether they'll have a lasting legacy, but they're positively received games, so I don't see why they can't inspire future game design.

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2 minutes ago, AtimZarr1 said:

That said, I don't think well-received games are necessarily "forgotten" within 15 months after launch. Defining any game that doesn't popularize/form a genre as "forgotten" is a bit of a high bar to set. Plenty of people continue to return to or try out games from many years ago, even if there's no modding scene or legacy to speak of. As long as the game is good and fun, people will recommend it and pass it along.

I think a lot of people incorrectly consider many bygone games as "dead" because they don't get modded repeatedly over the years or talked about to death, the way that the old titans like Doom, Super Mario, and Street Fighter do to this day. Their bar for what they consider to be a "remembered game" (for lack of a better word) is too high, or more accurately, misplaced - the common assumption is that a lack of endless chatter or a modding scene must mean an old game is "dead", but that's not so of course.

 

Between second-hand sales and piracy, a lot of these "dead"/"forgotten" games are still sold and downloaded tens of thousands of times per year, decades after they were released and purely on their own merit with no modding community to speak of. To me that says a lot of these "dead" games are actually alive and well in the sense that there are thousands out there who still actively enjoy them - they just lack the "chatter" and that makes them seem a lot more forgotten then they actually are.

 

I think it would've been treated similar to Wolfenstein 3D or Quake 1 - recognized for its influence in shaping the genre but not played much beyond that.

This actually ties into the point I'm making just above. Maybe Wolf3D and Quake don't get the attention these days that Doom gets, but I'd be willing to bet a million people around the world have bought/downloaded the first Quake or the first Wolf and played/enjoyed them in just 2020 alone. Their modding communities are "small" but only compared to Doom, really - they actually are modded far more than the average game.

 

If I ever created anything that had a fraction of that popularity - especially 20-30 years later - I would consider my product extremely successful!

 

I guess with this view, the modern Dooms will probably age kind of like Quake 2, or Duke Nukem 3D or something. Not revolutionary or new in any way, but still damn solid games that remain fun years later and retain fans even decades after their release. A game doesn't have to be in that God-tier "Doom, Street Fighter, Mario" category to be worthwhile after all.

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Pfft, These NuDum games are just Call of Duty with the walking speed modded to be faster, everyone knows every  FPS game made after 2007 aren't Good. End of Story. NuDoom is mediocre trash for Fake Doom fans. 

 

People only like them because they don't know any better and Have Objectively Bad taste... 

How anyone can like this sorry excuse of a game is beyond my superior intellect. 

Spoiler

/s

I mean they may not be the best in the Series, But They ares still Great games, I will never understand how and why anyone sees the New Doom games like its some kind of objectively bad game.

 

See ya guys in 15 years when we still takling of D16 and Eternal and maybe people will no longer be in denial that these games could possibly be considered Good on their own merit.

 

Edited by jazzmaster9

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the combat in the new doom games seems really amazing and stressful, I bet there'll be a permanent scene of people stubbornly modding them and speedrunning, etc. not to the level of ZZT or Doom or Morrowind but then what's new? Doom 1 and 2 have enduring support cos of their status as fairly early moddable games, with the PC games mags of the era running competitions and giving away cover disks full of doom modding tools, just at the time when techy nerds were getting online. it's hard to expect a modern game to achieve that same, barely unattainable "lives forever!" status

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In my opinion, it is the community that keeps OG Doom alive vs. the new Doom games. The mod support is also a huge contributor. Imagine if you will a game from the early '90s being maintained for 30+ years. There isn't this much support for any game ever wherein the community is releasing updates via source ports and continuing to make new content. I tell my IRL friends that Doom literally has unlimited content. You can't run out at all. From mapsets to full-blown total conversions that might as well be new games and even complex gameplay experiences. It is a wonder of the modern era that a game like Doom can stay alive for so long. Not to mention but mapping for doom or modding is incredibly simple compared to other games. If Doom Eternal has any hope of staying relevant passed its DLC's we need the source code released or at least a robust mod support. Not Doom builder lite that was Snap map. 

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4 hours ago, Tony_Danza_the_boss said:

Outside of my dislike for Eternal, I would at least give it a chance if there was a modding scene for it, or even give me the SnapMap from 2016. Alas, no.

As far as I get it, 2016's multiplayer and Snapmap are currently dependant on Bethesda's servers. Sooner or later they'll pull out support and bam, no Snapmap for you, unless fans commit some black magic fuckery or Bethesda somehow has an end-of-life plan, which I highly doubt. Same for Eternal's Battlemode - judging by how no new patch downloads happened when the balance changes rolled out, all the values and other gameplay data are stored on the servers.

I do realise that a source code release is a mere pipe dream at this point, but even if Marty isn't saying a corporate version of GTFO and mod support IS planned for Eternal, I wonder - to what extent they're going to allow modding. Will it be a Snapmap iteration, a level editor, or a full-on SDK? Will it allow putting custom assets or will it be vanilla only? Etc.
 

1 hour ago, jazzmaster9 said:

Pfft, These NuDum games are just Call of Duty with the walking speed modded to be faster, everyone knows every  FPS game made after 2007 aren't Good. End of Story. NuDoom is mediocre trash for Fake Doom fans. 

 

People only like them because they don't know any better and Have Objectively Bad taste... 

How anyone can like this sorry excuse of a game is beyond my superior intellect.  

Funny how literally nobody said anything of sort ITT (not even Foebane is here yet). So, to paraphrase you:
"We get it, you love the new Dooms..."

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5 minutes ago, Vic Vos said:

"We get it, you love the new Dooms."

Im glad we are at an understanding here. 

 

let's just ignore the fact that i said "I mean they may not be the best in the Series" in the same post... lets just sweep that under the rug... for the sake of "We get it, you love the new Dooms." being right.

 

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3 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I guess with this view, the modern Dooms will probably age kind of like Quake 2, or Duke Nukem 3D or something. Not revolutionary or new in any way, but still damn solid games that remain fun years later and retain fans even decades after their release. A game doesn't have to be in that God-tier "Doom, Street Fighter, Mario" category to be worthwhile after all.

 

I doubt that. Both DN3D and Q2 live on because of source ports which make them work on modern hardware. Duke in particular would be dead in the water if the original DOS EXE was the only way to play it. The new Dooms, like any modern game will have no chance of seeing a source release due to the overreliance on third party code and thus die once it becomes commercially unviable or incompatible with more recent hardware.

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

I doubt that. Both DN3D and Q2 live on because of source ports which make them work on modern hardware. Duke in particular would be dead in the water if the original DOS EXE was the only way to play it.

There's DOSBox. Many games on GOG are still bundled with DOSBox, which is the only way to play them on modern hardware, and they still have their fan base.

 

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

The new Dooms, like any modern game will have no chance of seeing a source release due to the overreliance on third party code and thus die once it becomes commercially unviable or incompatible with more recent hardware.

I find it unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Hardware (and OS) compatibility cycles have gotten much much longer since the DOS days, and are getting longer still, thanks to usage of proper APIs and driver abstraction layers. DOS games often relied on raw CPU speed-sensitive hardware timers, and low-level hardware programming for video and audio (since DOS offered little else). Thus, you often hit the CPU speed wall, and once ISA slots disappeared and with them the compatible sound cards, you were pretty much dead in the water. Today the APIs and the driver models are much more stable.

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5 hours ago, dr_st said:

I find it unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Hardware (and OS) compatibility cycles have gotten much much longer since the DOS days, and are getting longer still, thanks to usage of proper APIs and driver abstraction layers.

and it totally doesn't work in gfx department. things that were fast in the past becomes slow today, and vice versa. it is not about API per se, it is about hardware changes. you cannot abstract away gfx hardware, and in the same time keep gfx very fast. that's why people keep creating new gfx APIs: classic OpenGL, modern OpenGL (yes, they're two different APIs), Vulkan (and alot of obscure gfx APIs for various specialised devices). and if somebody believe that Vulkan is the thing to stay with us for decades... then i have some bad news for you. ;-)

 

most of the time emulators are "ok" to run old games. but without a way to implement various native-to-platform QoL things the game will be almost forgotten, with a small player base consisting of people who love jumping through the emulation hoops. ;-)

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