What motivates you to play Doom to this day?

[K_Doom]

Note: I'm not referring to current-gen Doom games (Doom 2016, Doom Eternal).
 

Well, I remember when I was little I just didn't have any knowledge of level design, monster spots, and other mapping concepts. And it was all fun, even the forgotten "Master Levels", which was what I knew at the time besides Doom shareware, Plutonia and TNT.

But now when open a wad I always look at everything analytically, it's not like I'm having fun like I used to, although I plan on playing Doom until the end of my life. It was even the only game I played for 10 years, other than Yu-gi-oh. My current motivation is this, play to learn and implement in my projects. In fact, I find it even more interesting to watch videos of people playing games than actually playing an entire megawad.

So I rephrase my question: for what motivation do you play Doom to this day?

I want to know your opinion about this.

[TwelvNighn]

Probably because the community is still making things

for Doom to this day for almost 28 years.

[muumi]

undying hatred towards demons

[heliumlamb]

those switches aren't gonna unpuzzle themselves!

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

I like the people here so keeping in touch with Doom allows me to maintain a common interest with them - if I didn't like the community, I wouldn't still be playing the game.

[K_Doom]

29 minutes ago, muumi said:

undying hatred towards demons

 

15 minutes ago, heliumlamb said:

those switches aren't gonna unpuzzle themselves!

It's really nice to read these fun answers lol

[mrthejoshmon]

Comfort in familiarity and nostalgia to help cope with the ever changing and alien world that I struggle to find myself a part to fit into, realising that due to my own actions I have effectively alienated myself from my age group/generation and left myself a pariah, doomed to always be on the fringe of society both unnoticed and forgotten...

 

But really it is because it is a fun game, honest.

[INfront95]

Dream of creating something of high quality. Therefore i need to play good wads to analyze them.... and because its still like, fun.

[K_Doom]

8 minutes ago, INfront95 said:

Dream of creating something of high quality. Therefore i need to play good wads to analyze them.... and because its still like, fun.

So we are the same.

[Somniac]

I forget who said it, but they summed it up perfectly: Doom's the never-ending game. 

[roadworx]

because, to put it bluntly, the stuff that this community produces on the regular is so, so much more creative, inspired, and full of heart than the vast majority of modern fps games, which are typically created by companies and are restrained by resources and executive bullshit. that's not the case here; due to the incredible versatility of not only doom by itself but also the various source ports that keep the game alive, it's essentially only limited by the author's talent. in addition, i myself enjoy mapping as a sort of creative outlet.

 

1 hour ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

I like the people here so keeping in touch with Doom allows me to maintain a common interest with them - if I didn't like the community, I wouldn't still be playing the game.

this is another big part of it for me...the doom community still remains the one place i always finding myself coming back to, despite my long stretches of inactivity. in a way, it's like a sort of home to me

[Shanoa]

It's as simple as DOOM just being a timeless classic and still extremely fun in 2022 and I'll say the same thing in 10 years and so on. The neverending release of new maps and projects make sure that if you play again after an extended break you'll have months and months of contents to digest, there's just always a new map waiting to be played.

 

The community to an extent too (outside of maps), although I don't really check any other Doom centric forum/discord outside of Doomworld and even there I have nonexistant interaction with the community once I log out.

[Majin]

it's the only game of it's kind, though not in a sense of flattery but rather objective observation.  doom is a very simple game with a very simple gameplay loop with very simple elements, normally this would shorten a game's life span by a mad amount but this works in doom's favour as a launching pad

 

the textures are heavily pixelated, meaning almost doesn't stand out as long as it matches the resolution. the enemies, props & weapons are comprised entirely of sprites, killing off a very large barrier which is the complexity that comes with modelling, animating & texturing. the map editors for doom are primitive in many aspects but it also gives it an edge in it's shallow & welcoming learning curve. a line-vector based engine is something to be appreciated in comparison to most engines that induce head-aches , they are technically powerful yes, but too big to work with to where most people use plugins to water it down. 

 

a good comparison i've made before is the difference between fan-made doom editors & the doom 2016 snapmap editor. despite the latter being on a technically superior engine & game, the snapmap is utterly dull & soulless. it's module based format kills creativity. doom editors for the originals however have managed to create thousands upon thousands of distinct maps that can range between a generic UAC map to huge genre swaps like medieval. hell people even remake other games within doom & make things completely unrecognizable to the base game.   

 

 

[Doctor_Spengler]

The community is an obvious answer, but for me its also the friends I've made with the same passion for doom.

[Murdoch]

Gun go pew pew bad guy fall down go splat. I am a simple man and the formula works.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Murdoch

[IcarusOfDaggers]

new content is always fun. and i prefer to look around in the stuff that may not get noticed, which is pretty hard in active community :D

[DoomGater]

I did not find a better game yet.

[Hisymak]

Here are bunch of reasons why I still play Doom:

- Can easily run on any hardware. I don't need to have any expensive gaming PC with super powerful graphics card and CPU and terabytes of storage. I can play Doom on a simple low-end laptop, and it will take up at most hundreds of megabytes from my hard drive.

- Simple to play. It's just start a game, collect weapons and stuff, shoot monsters and find your way to the exit. Nothing complicated, simple controls.

- Easy and relaxing. This game won't overwhelm my brain, I can play it just for relax.

- Never gets old. There's tons of content to play, new level designs and gameplay experience. It's not like finishing a base game once and being done, but it's like an endless game with non-repeating content.

- Music. I love listening to music while playing. Many level packs have original MIDI tracks made specifically for that levels, so pretty much same as previous point, but regarding music. I also like if level packs reuse MIDIs from older level packs (except vanilla Doom/Doom2!!!), other games, or a MIDIfied version of a known song.

- OPL Synth emulator. Doom ports ((G)Zdoom and few others) have built-in OPL Synth emulator, and so far I don't know about any other modern game (or a modern port of an older game) which features it. So in order to listen OPL Synth music nowadays, I can either play Doom, OR play DOS games in Dosbox.

- It's costless. Once I own the base Doom, I can play unlimited content without paying for new games, expansion packs, DLCs etc.

- And of course very active and friendly, non-toxic community.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Hisymak

[SiFi270]

It all started when I decided to calculate once and for all just how many custom levels were worth playing. The answer turned out to be infinity. And it seems I still have infinity more to go.

[The_SloVinator]

A few things:

 

- Still active & big community.

- A fuck ton of custom content to play.

- Making your own maps.

- Awesome folks who are chill & offer help whenever you need it.

- To git gud at doom. :>

[Berubaretto]

First of all, the game itself is enjoyable in spite of its long history. Secondly, it has probably the most creative community compared to other games'. Another reason is that it is simple to play and doesn't have too many requirements.

[Thelokk]

Not much really, in fact I've been playing less and less Doom as the weeks go by. I'm still somewhat attracted by the aesthetics, rarely by gameplay.

[The BMFG]

mapping 

[Solmyr]

Killing demons for fun, exploring and building new worlds to keep killing demons until my last day on this earth, and hopefully beyond.

[NoahRules]

the guns

[MFG38]

The community.

[Jaccident]

I’m going to have to agree with everyone saying the community, it’s probably the best part for me. The more analytical discussions in the community are especially enjoyable to read, and most of the people here are really nice. I’d say one of the main reasons I still play doom is so I end up having more to say, so I can join in with these conversations more often.

 

There’s also every so often that a map hits the spot and just absolutely blows me away, and when that happens, it’s like absolutely nothing else in the world.

[Mr. Freeze]

The community. I've been here for 13 years...where else am I gonna go? 

[TheFocus]

the game is so simple at it's core, but can be made into an almost infinite number of experiences. like many others have said, Doom is the never-ending game.

 

 

some might say it's..............................................ETERNAL

[OpenRift]

Practically endless community content. Doom has one of the largest modding communities in gaming, so there's always something new going on to look forward to, from maps to gameplay mods to source ports to multiplayer, to the crazy shit in between.