Doom 4 A Certainty

[Dutch Doomer]

Oh doom 4 what do I care about doom 4 I want the new Wolfenstein, RTCW is better than doom 3 well more addictive it doesn't look better but I don't care about the graphics its just an mighty fine shooter I love the FG42.

[dsm]

I don't care much about Doom 4 unless it's developed by Id themselves, or by another company (than Raven), which actually develops their games in the same simplistic, but highly polished fashion Id does.
Unfortunately, I know of no such company other than Id.

[kristus]

dsm said:

Unfortunately, I know of no such company other than Id.

TF on top! :p

[Frankdude]

As far as a true heretic sequal you may never get it.
I think what Hecatomb is catacombs 3D in his mind.
As far as I know catacombs 3d was made by id under obligation to softdisk.And unforutunetly I belive softdisk owns the copyright to catacombs 3d.Softdisk made three sequals to the game.
As far as its conection to heretic\hexen goes is that id made it and it was medevil in setting.

[Jonathan]

myk said:

You can't see the different interpretation I made of the events? It looks like Enjay and kristus did, though.

My original post said "Now it's a given that franchises will be continued as a matter of course." Whereas yours explained what a franchise was (thanks for educating us all) and said "The difference is that now they feel they can or need to expliot their old more legendary franchises again (Wolf3D, DOOM, Quake)." You also complained Doom 3 wasn't a good example of my argument, but this wasn't relevant to my original point, as I'll explain...

The fact that it's a remake of their hit title is what characterizes this shift, as opposed to making a quick set of sequels like they did in their early days. How is an error that makes your sentence unclear irrelevant?

Because the change I was discussing in my original post is not whether they ever make new games within their existing franchises, but that they do so "as a matter of course". E.g. the company is setup to continually leverage their existing franchises, even when developing new ones. Whether Doom 3 is counted as a remake or a sequel has no bearing on that.

More concretely, Adrian Carmack was in the company, and now he isn't. Was DOOM 3 really a "creative decision"? I'd say it had to do more with the fact that they felt that their focus brand, Quake, was losing steam and character, and they noticed DOOM was approaching its decade of life, so they took advantage of this for business reasons, and John Carmack liked the idea because it would not interfere with engine design concepts he could develop.

According to John Carmack's .plan update announcing Doom 3 and its associated fallout, it was not a presupposed decision that id would make Doom 3. It was a matter of some internal politicking and debate that resulted from enough of the development team, particularly John Carmack, wanting to work on Doom 3 as their next project. If you have some evidence that the choice of Doom 3 was based mainly on branding/business reasons, please share it, otherwise it is unfounded speculation and no better than me claiming the choice was based on the I Ching or the will of Cthulhu.

The change now, which was the whole point of my original post, is that id are being setup to exploit existing franchises as well as develop new ones, and that it is presupposed that their franchises will be continued so long as they are profitable. Given that they are only now in the process of setting up a second internal team, I don't see how you can argue that this isn't a change, or is something that's been going on for years.

[myk]

Jonathan said:
Whereas yours explained what a franchise was (thanks for educating us all)

To this and the rest of the trollish comments: don't waste any more of your time.

Whether Doom 3 is counted as a remake or a sequel has no bearing on that.

Yes, in your opinion, which is different than mine in some respects.

According to John Carmack's .plan update announcing Doom 3 and its associated fallout,

Some opposed the idea strongly, not wanting to go back to something they had worked on in the past or not liking it. In my opinion, that was the main turning point for the company (in relation to their current setup).

it was not a presupposed decision that id would make Doom 3.

Well, evidently some thought had been given to further DOOM projects, at least by John Carmack (e.g., looking into Doom2000). How is the "presupposed decision" thing a rule now (as opposed to a couple of years ago), other than that they are pretty certain DOOM 4 will be started and that they know the business value of their groundbreaking titles? You can often tell when a project has potential and it's not so hard to announce it then (an announcement which is sometimes necessary to help funding, organization, or other business needs).

If you have some evidence that the choice of Doom 3 was based mainly on branding/business reasons, please share it,

In addition to DOOM 3 itself and other projects that have been worked on by them since it was announced? When judging where a company is going do you merely go by what their PR department (or equivalent) is saying? Regardless of the way they may present it (or have presented it), their choice pretty much set them on their current business/company trend.

By the way, listen to Carmack himself say how they can rely on their old titles to be safe businesswise (from the interview this thread is about):

It is a different style of game which is risky especially when you’re talking a $20 million budget, and the safe this for us to do would be to run right into Doom 4. But we made the conscious decision that we want to broaden id a little bit. We’ve got Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

It seems they're heavily reliant on those franchises, but they still want to keep other doors open (Rage is an attempt) so that their opportunities don't stagnate in the future.

Given that they are only now in the process of setting up a second internal team, I don't see how you can argue that this isn't a change, or is something that's been going on for years.

Did I say there wasn't any change (recently)? No, but instead that the changes, such as the company restructuring (described at the end of my post above), are part of a process that started more or less when DOOM 3 was announced. Not too long after they had Return to Castle Wolfenstein released, and they have been providing more Quake material on the wayside all along. If anything, and possibly due to some growth related to their recent deals (DOOM 3, the movie, other projects) currently they have increased their involvement into sideprojects. They even mentioned that they did Quake 4's recent bug fixing themselves, as opposed to leaving it to Raven.

There was a little "civil war" in id back in 2000 (not that there hadn't been similar conflicts before, to a degree), which changed the kernel of the company and marked their way from then till now.

[BoldEnglishman]

KennyJC said:

I'm not that excited...

No FPS game has had me addicted since 2002 with RTCW/Enemy territory & Medal of Honor.

Might just be that despite the better visuals, the gameplay is just not as good/fun as it was. Why am I playing Doom, Quake and Enemy Territory more than I'm playing anything else from the last 4 years.

Even ETQW (judging from a few plays of the beta) seemed like a major let down.

What he said. Classic Doom and W:ET are the only FPSs I play now.

[sargebaldy]

Haven't they butchered the Doom name up enough? And by "they" I mean John Carmack, since that's all that's left of id.

[Shaviro]

Personally I think Doom3 was a great game. Very monotonous and single-minded, though, but that's how id games are. In my view anyway.

[Wobbo]

I don't think Doom 1, Doom 2, Quake 2, or Quake 3 were single-minded. I do think they were well designed classics of the genre, and that if one were to go back and analyze what it was that made them interesting and fun to play, you would find almost all of those aspects missing in Doom 3.

EANB said:

I am sick of people bitching about Doom 3, just because it wasn't in the style of the original or wasn't how they expected it to be.

People (at least in this thread) are not bitching about Doom 3 for not being in the style of Doom 1 and 2; they correctly criticizing Doom 3 for being a bad game. Even if the original Doom's had never existed Doom 3 would be nothing more than a first person Resident Evil - but without any of the inventory management or RPG/adventure aspects that make Resident Evil fun.

Megalyth said:

Any reasoning behind those statements?

No, only opinions. But the important thing is to remember those are opinions; ie we do not dislike Doom 3 for straying too far from the original game, we dislike Doom 3 becuase its a poor game period.

With all that said, I'm extremely excited for Rage.

[Megalyth]

Come again? If there's no reasoning behind the opinions, then how were they formed?

I didn't say anything about it straying from the original style, that's something that never mattered to me. But saying it's a poor game, period, isn't a valid statement. What about it do you think is poor, is what I'm wondering.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a perfect game by any measure, and I'm not a mindless fanboy. I have my own gripes with it. But to say that something sucks implies that every single aspect of it is flawed. Even with imperfect gameplay, the rest of the game construct doesn't convey the suckage that you seem to have read from it.

BTW I'm not flaming here, or trying to change your opinions, just discussing.

[Ralphis]

sargebaldy said:

Haven't they butchered the Doom name up enough? And by "they" I mean John Carmack, since that's all that's left of id.

How did they butcher the name? Doom 3 was a huge commercial success for ID and it wasn't even a bad game. Just because we've all got our dicks so far up classic doom's ass doesn't mean that things didn't change for the better.

[june gloom]

i wish doom 3 had actually been the system shock knockoff it was pretending to be. fucking linear, is what it was.

[myk]

Megalyth said:
If there's no reasoning behind the opinions, then how were they formed?

They are formed through experience. Reasoning is more useful to communicate and examine (and perhaps eventually modify to some degree) your position rather than to form it in the first place.

[Arioch]

it's like nothing changed

[Patrick]

Snarboo said:

I thought it was better than Half-Life 2

grrr... Half-Life is my homeboy... Admittedly, the only thing I didn't like about half-life 2 was the very very very linear gameplay. aside from that, its probly my favorite game ever... aside from doom of course

[kristus]

Arioch said:

it's like nothing changed

That's because it hasn't. I suggest you slowly back off and don't make any sudden moves.

[Megalyth]

myk said:

Reasoning is more useful to communicate and examine...

Which is what I've been attempting to do, however the reasons behind the opinions have yet to be heard.

I didn't want this to turn into something philosophical about the reasoning of reasoning, but I guess it comes down to one of those "just because you think it sucks doesn't mean it sucks" kind of things. But if someone didn't like it, they didn't like it. I was just hoping, in some semblance of detail, for an answer beyond the cut and dry "it sucks".

On topic, a sequel to Doom 3 sounds great. I'm down.

[leileilol]

I wouldn't mind a Doom 4 at all if done by veterans. I am not purposely bumming myself out expecting fast ssg/bfg exploit fests from the Doom title alone.

[myk]

Megalyth said:
I was just hoping, in some semblance of detail, for an answer beyond the cut and dry "it sucks".

I'm sure they're not interested in kicking a dead horse, that's all. A forum search will pull up a lot of opinions, though.

[sargebaldy]

Ralphis said:

How did they butcher the name? Doom 3 was a huge commercial success for ID and it wasn't even a bad game. Just because we've all got our dicks so far up classic doom's ass doesn't mean that things didn't change for the better.

Just because something sells well doesn't mean it wasn't crap. I would consider the fact that people have already lost interest in it a sign that there was nothing too special about it. I'm also talking about id's willingness to sell the name out for a shitty movie.

[Shaviro]

Lots of people still play doom3, sargebaldy.

[Scuba Steve]

A couple months ago I played through Doom3 for the first time... since I had a machine that could reasonably handle it. I thought it was fun. I'd give it an 88%. I got Resurrection of Evil but haven't had the time to play past the Bio-Suit section.

[BoldEnglishman]

Scuba Steve said:

A couple months ago I played through Doom3 for the first time... since I had a machine that could reasonably handle it. I thought it was fun. I'd give it an 88%. I got Resurrection of Evil but haven't had the time to play past the Bio-Suit section.

Thing is would you replay it??? (oh wait, I've replayed it a couple of times...)

[Stealthy Ivan]

Heh, well after reading these post's, I just hope Id software stays true to its roots... I'm still a fan no matter what!

[kristus]

I've replayed Doom3 and RoE several times.
Some in SP and some in Coop.

Lately I've been running to beat them both w/o unnecessary use of the artifacts. (Where necessary is the final battle in Doom3, and in RoE it's those "puzzels" that force you to use the helltime artifact. Although I am considering modding Doom3 and change so I can use any weapon on the Cyb, should make it a bit more intresting.)
RoE in particular is awesome fun with this, since in it the use of the artifacs is more offence than in Doom3. So you got this huge army of fast and buffed up creatures. And you take them on with nothing but your trusted old SSG (plus an arsenal of like 10 additional weapons...)

People who found Doom3 too slow and too much of a drag, would probably favor RoE. While those who enjoyed the claustrophobic and tense atmosphere as well as story of Doom3 might find themselves a bit disappointed, since the story is defenitely taking the back seat in RoE, where action is the main focus.

[Snarboo]

The only problem I had with RoE was that there wasn't enough of it. It just ended too soon and I wanted just a little more. A few more levels and maybe even a third new weapon would have made it perfect, IMO.

[BoldEnglishman]

Doom 3 Coop was fun, but coop is fun full stop.

Come to think of it, RoE was good because it was shorter. The fur started to fly alot quicker in RoE than Doom 3 (where IMO, action only really begins in Hell).

I remember re-visiting Hell in RoE and thinking "christ that was ALOT of monsters I just fought" (compared to the usual single to squad-size sorta deal)

[Wobbo]

Megalyth said:

Come again? If there's no reasoning behind the opinions, then how were they formed?

I didn't say anything about it straying from the original style, that's something that never mattered to me. But saying it's a poor game, period, isn't a valid statement. What about it do you think is poor, is what I'm wondering.

If your not one of the people who say "The only people that don't like doom 3 are those that wanted it to be just like the original" then my comments weren't directed at you. But many people do say exactly that, under the assumption that Doom 3 was a perfect game and had no objective flaws.

The actual problems with Doom 3 have been repeated many times on this board and in the doom 3 forum right here, they don't need to be repeated every time someone brings the game up. But since you asked:

- Repetitive Gameplay
- Linear level design
- Annoying Scripted sequences
- lack of strategy/depth
- Poor sound
- Weak weapons
- Unoriginal monsters that aren't satisfying to kill
- Cliched plot and cutscenes (which is worse than having no plot and no cutscenes

Now you probably want to make a huge quote post and refute every opinion, but you'd be missing the point. *Some people* value non-linear design, *some people* value good sound design, *some people *want strategy and depth in their FPS. If you disagree, it's not because we want to live in the past and your accepting the present, it's because we actually have different opinions about FPS. Not everyone that dislikes Doom 3 wants to stay in 1993 forever.

[John Smith]

You forgot that Doom 3 is dark.

Neways when I first played Doom 3 I thought it sucked. Not because it wasn't a good game, but because it wasn't a good Doom game. Having played it twice more since then I've come to realize that I was right the first time, but I was blinded by my rabid love for classic doom that I focused on the fact that it was a bad Doom game, and not a good game.

And slightly offtopic, Doom isn't even good classic Doom most of the time these days. A lot of wads these days are of the scripted shit variety and are made by authors with almost as much creativity as my left testicle. Not trying to piss on anyones parade but the glory days of doom where you could look forward to truly epic stuff are over. Tying it back in why should we hold Doom 3 to the great standard of classic Doom when we no longer hold classic Doom itself to that standards.