Doom 4 should have...

[Doomguy777]

Marnetmar said:

Go away.

Nope, Chuck Testa. Also, one more thing. I wish id Software would make a DOOM 64 sequel.

[Kaskaum]

Obzen said:

In a pre-Half Life 2 world, it was plenty modern. Linear, story-driven, heavily scripted, drew influence from Half-Life and System Shock 2... the two games that really shaped what was considered a "modern" shooter circa 2003/2004. By today's standards, it's still pretty old-school, yeah.

The problem of D3 according to critics from that time: it was already born dated, Half-life 2 and Halo, that were born in this same era as D3, came with a better story and also a better enemy AI, while D3 monsters have basically the same AI from D1-2. It was one of the causes D3 bombed while HL2 and Halo took the lead and changed the FPS market.

EDIT: D3 even being received coldly compared to those 2 games above, D3 had the best sales of all id games (over 3.5KK) and made the biggest profit for id since the company was born.

[Doomguy777]

Kaskaum said:

The problem of D3 according to critics from that time: it was already born dated, Half-life 2 and Halo, that were born in this same era as D3, came with a better story and also a better enemy AI, while D3 monsters have basically the same AI from D1-2. It was one of the causes D3 bombed while HL2 and Halo took the lead and changed the FPS market.

EDIT: D3 even being received coldly compared to those 2 games above, D3 had the best sales of all id games (over 3.5KK) and made the biggest profit for id since the company was born.

No the real problem with DOOM 3 at the time, was the fact it marketed itself as a DOOM remake, all the while lacking a setting on Phobos and Deimos. Also, the Hell levels should have been extended. And on top of that the Spider Mastermind should have been the final boss. No Soul Cube to defeat the Cyberdemon, actually use guns.

Guns should have looked like DOOM 1 and 2 counterparts.....

Etc.etc.etc.

Anyway, a bit on-topic would anyone here like to see a DOOM 64 sequel?

[Five Magics]

Doomguy777 said:

It's just a video game.... eh? From what I know, and from what the community knows... DOOM is more than just a video game. DOOM is an experience. The original DOOM was just so good, so amazing. It was an experience. Not a video game. The same goes for Wolfenstein 3D, Quake 1, and Half-Life 1.

Holy shit your posts are comedy gold.

[ChickenOrBeef]

Shaviro said:

The angle doesn't have to be unique to be successful.

But here's my issue with that. Emphasizing the feel of the classic Doom games would be unique within the current time period. id Software simply has to expand on that, and they already have a unique and fresh experience. If you feel that should be thrown away (I'm referring to the aspects of Doom that aren't often used in today's market), I feel the direction has to be even more unique and interesting.

With that said, perhaps your direction is indeed more interesting, but...

Shaviro said:

If all you got out of it was "story-driven shooter with the aesthetics of Doom", you should go back and read it again :) I'm describing a certain angle in game storytelling that focuses on the experience. In this case, going with less of a "one man kicking the ass of hell" and more with a personal side to the invasion, depicting the devastation and the loss. All this from the eyes of the player.

...you only explained WHAT the story is, and not HOW the story will be told. You mentioned that the perspective should stay in first-person, and while I agree with that, it's certainly nothing new.

You did provide a few tidbits here though:

Shaviro said:

1. Depend less on constant bombarding action like in Wolf TNO and Bioshock Infinite.
2. Leave more to the player to explore.
3. Go with a lower number of different locations (Wolf has many) and less (but more substantial) key points in the story.
4. Only leave first person view when absolutely necessary.
5. Work towards having as little monologue-time towards the player as possible (bad examples being HL2, Quake4 and Prey). Push the info out into scripted backdrop scenes and more condensed dialogue.

All of these points sound fine to me. But where we disagree seems to be on the amount of story and on the feel of the gunplay, which leads me to the next section...

Shaviro said:

I don't know where you got that from. Earlier in this thread I wrote about a few aspects of classic Doom you could bring forward. It was even in a reply to one of your posts - to which you agreed. What aspects are you advocating to put emphasis on?

As I mentioned in my first paragraph, it seems you only want to include the aspects that are also present in a handful of today's big shooters, such as open areas. I certainly agree with open areas, but where Doom would feel fresh are the following three areas:

1) Speed - Nearly every single shooter in the current landscape is slow and grounded. This means the player is too slow to dodge attacks, and thus has to go from shooting to cover to shooting to cover, and so on. In classic Doom, you sometimes take cover, but the player is fast enough to dodge enemies WHILE attacking. It's more fun than spending so much time doing nothing behind a wall.

2) Player control - What do I mean by that? In classic Doom, you're dropped into a level, and that's it. Everything from there on out is your doing. You don't walk to a certain room and have control taken away for a first-person cut-scene. You don't have to follow an NPC character. Etc. At any point in the level you can go anywhere you want. You're never funneled through a scripted sequence. This is where the requests for a "non-intrusive" story come into play. The story needs to be told in your surroundings and it needs to be more about how your actions affect your surroundings, rather than how your surroundings affect you. This also leads to more replayability.

3) Feeling powerful - Classic Doom was balanced in a way to make the player feel both powerful and challenged. The player was able to go toe-to-toe with enemies instead of cowering behind cover, and he was able to kill many of the enemies with very few shots. There was also a degree of satisfying gore (and badass music), to make the player feel cool as fuck. But the challenge came from how potent the enemies are and their ability to corner the player.


Now, I should reiterate that I don't think Doom 4 should ONLY be what I described above. What I just described is how Doom 4 can feel fresh, but you can put that within a larger framework that is modernized and pushes boundaries in ways that don't infringe upon that type of feel. There can be an open world, there can be co-operative and competitive play, you can break new ground in destructible environments and dismemberment, you can infuse plenty of atmospheric storytelling into the environment, you can have plenty of exploration, etc.

Obzen said:

If a game like Titanfall can work on consoles, with its incredibly fast movement speed and wall-running and double jumping, why the hell can't Doom be fast? Why does Doom have to convince the player to be emotionally invested with an engrossing story? Doom has always told it's story through level design and atmosphere, excluding Doom 3. I am very curious why so many seem to think that an over the top arcade/action shooter should conform to the stylings of story driven FPS/RPGs.

People seem to assume that because a certain type of game is popular that every other game should be just like it, otherwise it fails. Who thought Borderlands was going to take off before it came out, right smack in the middle of CoD mania? How about a game like Deus Ex: Human Revolution? A stealth-action RPG that should be the definition of niche? How about Demon's Souls? A brutally hard and slow paced dark-fantasy action game pretty much devoid of story?

Doom's sensibilities and original design philosophy are already established to carve out a very unique section of gaming. There is a huge hunger out there for games for gameplay's sake. All you need to do is look at the success the Demon's/Dark Souls games have had. This can apply to Doom, and really is the only way I can see this franchise being successful. id Software already are well aware they made a mistake with Doom 3 by chasing the "mainstream" and incorporating "modern" mechanics and narrative. I don't see how they could possibly make that mistake twice.

Beautifully said.

[Kaskaum]

I don't know why people are praising Titanfall so much, because, at least on XBOX ONE, it has almost the same gameplay pace-style as Halo, playing both games Halo 4 and TF multiplayer the feeling is almost the same. All that can be said is how Halo has influenced FPS on consoles.

Sony for example was never capable of catching the successful Halo mechanic, just see how Killzone sucks compared to Halo. Titanfall did a good job because the feeling and pace sounds similar to Halo(mainly 1 and 4).

[Koko Ricky]

Something I'm surprised I didn't mention before: Given that neo-Doom will undoubtedly be in HD 16:9, a HUD not dissimilar to Doom Alpha could potentially work well without crowding the screen. A built-in automap, weapon specs, messages from superiors or other NPCs, health/armor and other stats could be cleverly overlayed as if the helmet had a "smartvisor." Not a new idea, I know, but it would certainly be fresh for Doom.

[Doomguy777]

Five Magics said:

Holy shit your posts are comedy gold.

I know right dude? Anyway man, I like your username cause it's a reference to Megadeth and all and I'm a metalhead. *see Wayne's World for reference*.

Anyway, back on topic. DOOM 4 or the new DOOM should just have kickass gameplay. And umm... it should be suspenseful like DOOM 1. DOOM 2 was meh compared to DOOM 1 because it lacked that atmosphere.

[Koko Ricky]

Doom 2 has plenty of atmosphere. Lots of dark, creepy maps and bizarre geometry.

[DooM_RO]

GoatLord said:

Something I'm surprised I didn't mention before: Given that neo-Doom will undoubtedly be in HD 16:9, a HUD not dissimilar to Doom Alpha could potentially work well without crowding the screen. A built-in automap, weapon specs, messages from superiors or other NPCs, health/armor and other stats could be cleverly overlayed as if the helmet had a "smartvisor." Not a new idea, I know, but it would certainly be fresh for Doom.

I really like this HUD

http://media.moddb.com/images/downloads/1/63/62445/Screenshot_Doom_20131206_193219.png

Kaskaum said:

The problem of D3 according to critics from that time: it was already born dated, Half-life 2 and Halo, that were born in this same era as D3, came with a better story and also a better enemy AI, while D3 monsters have basically the same AI from D1-2. It was one of the causes D3 bombed while HL2 and Halo took the lead and changed the FPS market.

EDIT: D3 even being received coldly compared to those 2 games above, D3 had the best sales of all id games (over 3.5KK) and made the biggest profit for id since the company was born.

I REALLY don't see why Half Life 2 is better than Doom 3 except for physics and animations. The story is cliched, the guns are just ok, levels are MORE linear than Doom 3. Sure, it has the Ravenholtd level but if you look at the whole? What exactly is so special about Half Life 2? It took away all the tension and atmosphere of Half Life and even though Doom 3 may not be as good as the original Half Life, it at least carried the torch.

ChickenOrBeef said:

1) Speed - Nearly every single shooter in the current landscape is slow and grounded. This means the player is too slow to dodge attacks, and thus has to go from shooting to cover to shooting to cover, and so on. In classic Doom, you sometimes take cover, but the player is fast enough to dodge enemies WHILE attacking. It's more fun than spending so much time doing nothing behind a wall.

2) Player control - What do I mean by that? In classic Doom, you're dropped into a level, and that's it. Everything from there on out is your doing. You don't walk to a certain room and have control taken away for a first-person cut-scene. You don't have to follow an NPC character. Etc. At any point in the level you can go anywhere you want. You're never funneled through a scripted sequence. This is where the requests for a "non-intrusive" story come into play. The story needs to be told in your surroundings and it needs to be more about how your actions affect your surroundings, rather than how your surroundings affect you. This also leads to more replayability.

3) Feeling powerful - Classic Doom was balanced in a way to make the player feel both powerful and challenged. The player was able to go toe-to-toe with enemies instead of cowering behind cover, and he was able to kill many of the enemies with very few shots. There was also a degree of satisfying gore (and badass music), to make the player feel cool as fuck. But the challenge came from how potent the enemies are and their ability to corner the player.

I totally agree!

[Shaviro]

ChickenOrBeef said:

...you only explained WHAT the story is, and not HOW the story will be told. You mentioned that the perspective should stay in first-person, and while I agree with that, it's certainly nothing new.

For someone so obsessed about things being new, fresh and unique you're very insisting on digging up 20 year old game mechanics :)
You keep demanding more details and more explanation from me, yet what you provide and the reasoning behind it is almost non existant.

All of these points sound fine to me. But where we disagree seems to be on the amount of story and on the feel of the gunplay

The amount of story? What? Do you mean the rate at which the player is presented with/can seek out story details about the world? Do you mean how involved the plot is? Cutscenes? What?

1) Speed -Nearly every single shooter in the current landscape is slow and grounded. This means the player is too slow to dodge attacks, and thus has to go from shooting to cover to shooting to cover, and so on. In classic Doom, you sometimes take cover, but the player is fast enough to dodge enemies WHILE attacking. It's more fun than spending so much time doing nothing behind a wall.

In most games you are battling soldiers with pistols, machineguns, shotguns. You can't outrun those. You couldn't in Doom either. What kind of speed are you looking for? Like what was seen in Doom? How would that work with modern graphics in a presumably realistic style? Should they change the visual style to accommodate this? I don't want to assume too much, but it sounds like you don't play a lot of new first person shooters if you believe they're all slow and grounded. You can run plenty fast in many modern shooters. Let's take Wolf as an example. You can run pretty fast, but you don't. Why? Bullet enemies.

I'm all for having a faster player than your average shooter, but not the insane speeds of Doom. Running that fast in a game with modern visuals starts to become less of an advantage and more of a problem. See, there is already a shooter on the market with Doom like running speed. It's called ROTT and was released in 2013. Check out a few videos of it and you'll notice that players constantly stop moving to take aim and let the blurring visuals settle, thus invalidating the fast move speed.

It's much more important to introduce slower projectiles for the bulk of the enemies. The relativity of the player speed is way more giving than the actual speed. If the player is able to run around without being insta-killed, he will. Speed is just one of many things to accomplish this.

2) Player control -What do I mean by that? In classic Doom, you're dropped into a level, and that's it. Everything from there on out is your doing. You don't walk to a certain room and have control taken away for a first-person cut-scene. You don't have to follow an NPC character. Etc. At any point in the level you can go anywhere you want. You're never funneled through a scripted sequence. This is where the requests for a "non-intrusive" story come into play. The story needs to be told in your surroundings and it needs to be more about how your actions affect your surroundings, rather than how your surroundings affect you. This also leads to more replayability.

I don't think you'll find anyone here that wants to lose player control through cutscenes on a regular basis, so not much to discuss there. As for following an NPC character for instance, I'm not so much stuck in my ways (and the 90s) as to completely reject any kind of "new" mechanic that may or may not fit the oh so holy grail of 1993 Doom. I'm not saying you do either, but it kinda comes across like that.

You're funnelled plenty in Doom though. Many of the levels are open, especially the (in my opinion) superior Doom2 levels, leaving the player to figure out the approach. You're mostly always funnelled through a colored key door. You're ALWAYS funnelled through the exit and start of the level. On a larger scale you're funnelled through the start of the game, the end of the game and a few checkpoints along the way for story updates. Yes yes, there are no scripted sequences in Doom, but the principle remains the same.

What do you mean with the last part? About the player affecting the surrounds more than vice versa? Are you going with the old "ONE MAN VERSUS HELL" deal? How is your story and what is it? So far you've done a lot of dismissing and 0.01 input on that topic. What are you advocating for here? That the story is the player shooting things? That the player dictates the plot? Is it just a matter of seeing things move when the player hits switches? Placing the player square int he center and letting the world move around with him like the far background in a sidescroller is an extremely poor decision though. Are you telling me that in a world that's been taken over by hostile beings of another dimension, the player isn't affected? My best guess is that you mean instead of seing cutscenes of random monster grabbing the player, we should see a bridge explode because you just set a bomb there. That's just a guess though because you're so vague about everything. Either way, I agree with that, but that's not really story.

3) Feeling powerful -Classic Doom was balanced in a way to make the player feel both powerful and challenged. The player was able to go toe-to-toe with enemies instead of cowering behind cover, and he was able to kill many of the enemies with very few shots. There was also a degree of satisfying gore (and badass music), to make the player feel cool as fuck. But the challenge came from how potent the enemies are and their ability to corner the player.

This has to be in every shooter that's not in a niche. And it is, just on different levels. For me, I'd rather feel the gravity of the situation than the ease of disposing enemies. It's not a binary choice though and has ties into most other aspects of the game design. If you want the game world and its problems to feel real then there is only so far you can go with the power of one man.

Now, I should reiterate that I don't think Doom 4 should ONLY be what I described above. What I just described is how Doom 4 can feel fresh, but you can put that within a larger framework that is modernized and pushes boundaries in ways that don't infringe upon that type of feel. There can be an open world, there can be co-operative and competitive play, you can break new ground in destructible environments and dismemberment, you can infuse plenty of atmospheric storytelling into the environment, you can have plenty of exploration, etc.

Like expected by the both of us, we're probably not too far a part.
I don't, however, feel that what you've written here is all that fresh or unique. I don't think it HAS to be, but that was your argument. The market is actually pretty diverse if you look beyond the modern military shooter.

[Obzen]

Shaviro said:

This has to be in every shooter that's not in a niche. And it is, just on different levels. For me, I'd rather feel the gravity of the situation than the ease of disposing enemies. It's not a binary choice though and has ties into most other aspects of the game design. If you want the game world and its problems to feel real then there is only so far you can go with the power of one man.

I believe what he is saying is, the world, characters, and atmosphere tell a story. The player uses suspension of disbelief to build a believable world around the gameplay.

Books, for example, build worlds with words. A good book will generally not describe ever little detail of a world, it's up to the reader to use their suspension of disbelief to imagine that place.

Movies on the other hand, can build a world with visuals. Movies are restricted to much less dialogue, compared to books... but we fill in the gaps that aren't explained to us by using the visuals as a guide to suspend our disbelief.

Games are a little different, because they can be a vessel for gameplay, story, or both. In Doom, I feel the game is pretty much about gameplay. A deep story will distract one from the gameplay, just like over-descriptive world building can bog down the narrative of a book. The visuals and actions the player performs should be enough to suspend the player's disbelief that the world they are in is believable, at least enough for it to be an immersive gaming experience.

I brought up Dark Souls earlier in this thread and I think it applies very well here. There is little to no story at all in Dark Souls, yet it is incredibly immersive. You are just immersed in gameplay, as opposed to being immersed in narrative. There are games that do both well (Half-Life, Wolfenstein: TNO, Metal Gear Solid) but those have little to do with Doom, IMO. When I think of Doom, I think of games like Mario, Street Fighter and Dark Souls. A game that you don't play to get story out of, or see what happens at the end. It's a game you play for the bits in between all that, the actual GAMEPLAY.

[DooM_RO]

Obzen said:

I believe what he is saying is, the world, characters, and atmosphere tell a story. The player uses suspension of disbelief to build a believable world around the gameplay.

Books, for example, build worlds with words. A good book will generally not describe ever little detail of a world, it's up to the reader to use their suspension of disbelief to imagine that place.

Movies on the other hand, can build a world with visuals. Movies are restricted to much less dialogue, compared to books... but we fill in the gaps that aren't explained to us by using the visuals as a guide to suspend our disbelief.

Games are a little different, because they can be a vessel for gameplay, story, or both. In Doom, I feel the game is pretty much about gameplay. A deep story will distract one from the gameplay, just like over-descriptive world building can bog down the narrative of a book. The visuals and actions the player performs should be enough to suspend the player's disbelief that the world they are in is believable, at least enough for it to be an immersive gaming experience.

I brought up Dark Souls earlier in this thread and I think it applies very well here. There is little to no story at all in Dark Souls, yet it is incredibly immersive. You are just immersed in gameplay, as opposed to being immersed in narrative. There are games that do both well (Half-Life, Wolfenstein: TNO, Metal Gear Solid) but those have little to do with Doom, IMO. When I think of Doom, I think of games like Mario, Street Fighter and Dark Souls. A game that you don't play to get story out of, or see what happens at the end. It's a game you play for the bits in between all that, the actual GAMEPLAY.

Very well said! I too think Doom is the Super Mario of shooters!

@Shaviro

I don't think Doom 4 should be as fast as the original but I DO think it should be faster than the average modern shooter. TNO does have fast running speed but you can't exactly circlestrafe and all enemies are hitscanners anyway.

Doom 3 BFG running speed would be fine I think. This could be explained that the marine suit gives faster running speed.

[Kaskaum]

Rise of the Triad remake shows that a extreme speed + modern graphics doesn't mean a better game, because due to the need to take aim + the blur effect of the modern games you often need to stop to focus on the enemies.

Doom 1-2 you barely needed to aim like I said and I say it again, you can perfectly run through enemies while kill them in fast forward due to the simple aim mechanic, but looking at ROTT remake, it would not be a very good idea if the next gen Doom were just like this but with demons and the DOOM logo: (the blurry visuals due to the fast speed + a bigger endeavor to aim than classic Doom tire the eyes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtxIBMGj0Y

Off course, the hordes of hardcore console FPS gamers will never play it.

[Amph]

in doom 1 & 2 you barely need to aim because of the stupid auto-aim and no free look, i removed that crap long time ago, now it is much more fun

dunno why doom players are obsessed with it, it make the game more easy

also rise of the triad remake was bad for me for other reaosns, like no monsters, honestly i like monsters enemies more than human enemies, add the fact that the enemies in ROTT are almost all hitscan, they are designed very badly, you can't really compare them to the doom 2 line-up...

[Shaviro]

Obzen said:

I believe what he is saying is, the world, characters, and atmosphere tell a story. The player uses suspension of disbelief to build a believable world around the gameplay.

Your quote was a response to something about the balance between a powerful player and a challenged player. How did you get all of this from that? Unless you quoted the wrong section.

Games are a little different, because they can be a vessel for gameplay, story, or both. In Doom, I feel the game is pretty much about gameplay. A deep story will distract one from the gameplay, just like over-descriptive world building can bog down the narrative of a book. The visuals and actions the player performs should be enough to suspend the player's disbelief that the world they are in is believable, at least enough for it to be an immersive gaming experience.

I do not accept your premise about the non-term "gameplay" and "story" being two separate entities or modules. Creating a game in the vein of the AAA shooter is not a matter of creating a fun action experience and then draping "story" on top. The story is part of the foundation for your game and everything in the game derives from it either im- or explicitly. If you want a coherent experience based on progressive play which hits all the right nerves along the way, then this is pretty much the only way to do it. The plotline can then unfold any way it wants. There are an endless ways to do that, but you can't separate story and world building. Many (myself included) mistakenly use "story" as the term for anything with characters and plot, but the correct usage of the terms are as follows;

Story: What the game (in this case) is about
Plot: What happens

For Doom(4), the story would probably be something like this: "Monsters from another dimension invade earth and a small group of survivors must overcome the threat". I would personally prefer survive/flee Earth to "overcoming", but that's just me ;)

The plot would most likely be completely different. Something like, "When the all powerful company known as the UAC accidentally opened a portal to hell, duty is called upon ex marine SOMEONE to fight back the global invasion. Along the way he meets SOMEONE ELSE and they team up to.." and so forth. When a cutscene starts and some character whines about his missing teddy bear, this is the PLOT intervening, not the STORY. The story can't interrupt you.

Even Doom1 has extensive story work. It's part of why it's such a coherent experience. Once they shipped away the guy who actually cared about this stuff(or he left on his own), they started making less coherent games like Quake which was more or less a series of random decisions in the vein of "let's do some doom stuff" in 3D. Even when speaking of the PLOT, Doom has more drastic stuff going on than many newer games. There are actually twists and turns like the player dying and going to hell in which Deimos now resides. The way they present the plotline is very primitive, but it's there.

While I do agree there are games not based on story, these are VERY different from games like Doom. I guess Chess, Ludo, Tetris and the likes are good examples.

(Half-Life, Wolfenstein: TNO, Metal Gear Solid) but those have little to do with Doom, IMO. When I think of Doom, I think of games like Mario, Street Fighter and Dark Souls. A game that you don't play to get story out of, or see what happens at the end. It's a game you play for the bits in between all that, the actual GAMEPLAY.

Doom having little to do with Half-Life? The latter is more or less based on a healthy mixture of Doom and The Mist (Stephen King book). Again I think you're committing the fallacy of ignoring everything that made Doom special and unique in 1993. It was indeed the move away from "arcade" games and into the general direction that was later followed up by Half-Life. I don't blame you though, 20 years of playing custom wads will do that to you.

[Shaviro]

DooM_RO said:

I REALLY don't see why Half Life 2 is better than Doom 3 except for physics and animations. The story is cliched, the guns are just ok, levels are MORE linear than Doom 3. Sure, it has the Ravenholtd level but if you look at the whole? What exactly is so special about Half Life 2? It took away all the tension and atmosphere of Half Life and even though Doom 3 may not be as good as the original Half Life, it at least carried the torch.

The two of us could sit down and talk for hours why Half-Life 2 is overrated. I've often written about the failures of HL2 and why it's a bad sequel to Half-Life. The problem though is that the general gaming scene sees Doom3 as something of a joke and Half-Life2 as "best game ever" material. At least back in 2004/5. I'm not sure how it is today, but I'd be surprised if it were all that different. What Kaskaum writes is absolutely true. Doom3 was considered dated at launch. The two of us can pat eachother on the backs and say "Fuck that, I like Doom3 better" and ignore the wide HL2 acclaim. Id software can't. They have to make a living and their AAA setup doesn't allow for niche titles. They don't have to copy what's popular now, but they can't ignore that or the huge opposition Doom3 experienced. Continuing in that direction would be as big a mistake as just copycatting Call of Duty.

I know you don't believe either of those directions to be true and viable, but I'm just trying to illustrate how important it is to keep the reality of the situation in mind when discussing what "Doom 4 should have". I'd fucking love to see a PC only title that threw out all the friction causing features designed to bridge the gap between the FPS and the console controller scheme and went with something that really catered to the possibilities of the PC. Just like Doom and Half-Life did back then. That would be amazing. But it's not going to happen for the reasons Kaskaum has stated in this thread.

I do believe that some day we could again see a PC spearheaded shooter that returns to the path we were on with Half-Life (and to a lesser degree HL2), but it would probably be a completely different setup. Perhaps digital distribution only, less manpower, more content based on proceduralism. Anything they can do to cut down the cost of the production without seriously impeding the quality.

[DooM_RO]

Maybe the Doom community could do it itself on the Wrack engine. We have a lot of very talented people here. Even Doom Ascension could evolve into something like that. An unofficially official Doom sequel DTWID-like community project? That would be great

[Doomguy777]

Kaskaum said:

Rise of the Triad remake shows that a extreme speed + modern graphics doesn't mean a better game, because due to the need to take aim + the blur effect of the modern games you often need to stop to focus on the enemies.

Doom 1-2 you barely needed to aim like I said and I say it again, you can perfectly run through enemies while kill them in fast forward due to the simple aim mechanic, but looking at ROTT remake, it would not be a very good idea if the next gen Doom were just like this but with demons and the DOOM logo: (the blurry visuals due to the fast speed + a bigger endeavor to aim than classic Doom tire the eyes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLtxIBMGj0Y

Off course, the hordes of hardcore console FPS gamers will never play it.

This is really good. I personally love this ROTT remake. It actually requires skill, something that most modern first-person shooters don't have. If you want DOOM to be some slow Halo shit then fine go ahead. But I want DOOM to either be at a ROTT speed or at....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gW_D9p7e2I

I <3 Black Mesa.

The thing is though, the main question is... what kind of story would the new DOOM have?

If it's a reimagining perhaps it should elaborate on the original DOOM's story.

In my opinion it should be a good story with a great gameplay.

[Kaskaum]

After playing Titanfall a lot more, I can tell that TF can really serve as inspiration for id to make a proper Doom placed on a futuristic Earth. It has scenarios with a lot of space (in which can be put good number of monsters simultaneously) for you to run-dash with those awesome jetpacks, beautiful futuristic Earth art, and a fun and dynamic gameplay that work in both consoles and PCs(yes almost all post 2001 FPS took something from Halo gameplay to be more enjoyable on consoles)

[Obzen]

Shaviro said:

I do not accept your premise about the non-term "gameplay" and "story" being two separate entities or modules. Creating a game in the vein of the AAA shooter is not a matter of creating a fun action experience and then draping "story" on top. The story is part of the foundation for your game and everything in the game derives from it either im- or explicitly. If you want a coherent experience based on progressive play which hits all the right nerves along the way, then this is pretty much the only way to do it. The plotline can then unfold any way it wants. There are an endless ways to do that, but you can't separate story and world building. Many (myself included) mistakenly use "story" as the term for anything with characters and plot, but the correct usage of the terms are as follows;

Story: What the game (in this case) is about
Plot: What happens

For Doom(4), the story would probably be something like this: "Monsters from another dimension invade earth and a small group of survivors must overcome the threat". I would personally prefer survive/flee Earth to "overcoming", but that's just me ;)

The plot would most likely be completely different. Something like, "When the all powerful company known as the UAC accidentally opened a portal to hell, duty is called upon ex marine SOMEONE to fight back the global invasion. Along the way he meets SOMEONE ELSE and they team up to.." and so forth. When a cutscene starts and some character whines about his missing teddy bear, this is the PLOT intervening, not the STORY. The story can't interrupt you.

Even Doom1 has extensive story work. It's part of why it's such a coherent experience. Once they shipped away the guy who actually cared about this stuff(or he left on his own), they started making less coherent games like Quake which was more or less a series of random decisions in the vein of "let's do some doom stuff" in 3D. Even when speaking of the PLOT, Doom has more drastic stuff going on than many newer games. There are actually twists and turns like the player dying and going to hell in which Deimos now resides. The way they present the plotline is very primitive, but it's there.

While I do agree there are games not based on story, these are VERY different from games like Doom. I guess Chess, Ludo, Tetris and the likes are good examples.

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." - John Carmack

The story is there because you need someone to shoot... Doom isn't unlike Tetris in terms of purpose. The purpose of the game is gameplay. If they made up a story for Tetris, something like: "Blocks are falling from the sky! As Earth's most powerful Telekinetic super hero, you must use your mind to lay the blocks down in line to make them disappear!" would the gameplay be any different? No, because the reason you play Tetris is to solve a randomized block puzzle.

Doom has some awesome themes and an awesome sense of place/atmosphere. I'm glad for that. It's an awesome bonus. That's kind of all it is though, a really awesome bonus.

[Doominator2]

Although, Story was there to make Doom 3 at least finishable, even though the story is cliche, it still makes you want to finish, if a game were just walking through hallways shooting things, without any narrative, the game would get boring very fast.

[ChickenOrBeef]

Shaviro said:

For someone so obsessed about things being new, fresh and unique you're very insisting on digging up 20 year old game mechanics :)

Again, my point is that Doom is already fresh. I'm not saying Doom 4 should be as extreme as classic Doom, but if you release a game that's inspired by the general feel of the classic games, it would stand out today. I'll go into more detail below on what I'm referring to.

Shaviro said:

The amount of story? What? Do you mean the rate at which the player is presented with/can seek out story details about the world? Do you mean how involved the plot is? Cutscenes? What?

Well, let's start with the type of storytelling no one here would disagree with; using the environment. The levels in the original Doom gradually became more satanic and hellish as the player progressed. Doom 3 had educational videos playing nearby that discussed the UAC. Resistance 2 had a dude on the radio discussing the state of the world. The houses in The Last of Us often showed us how the final hours transpired for the former owners just by looking around the house. Expanding on this type of storytelling would be ideal for a Doom 4, in my opinion. Control is never taken away from the player, everything is optional, the pacing isn't interrupted, and most importantly, it's subtle.

The next best type of storytelling would be discoverable pieces of exposition, such as the typical intel documents and audio logs. I like that this is usually optional, but it also grinds the game to halt when you want to check it out. So this should be used wisely.

The most controversial type of storytelling would be scripted events and scenes. I feel this should generally be avoided for replayability reasons. I believe you mentioned before that there should be a small amount of scenes in Doom 4, but they would each be significant. I agree. That would actually be similar to the original Doom. Having a major scene or event occur at the end of each chapter, for example, would make sense. It would be a nice segue into the next section of the game.

Shaviro said:

What kind of speed are you looking for? Like what was seen in Doom? How would that work with modern graphics in a presumably realistic style? Should they change the visual style to accommodate this?

Of course it shouldn't be as fast as classic Doom. I'd say it could be on par with the console version of Unreal Tournament III, for example. But I agree with you that...

Shaviro said:

It's much more important to introduce slower projectiles for the bulk of the enemies. The relativity of the player speed is way more giving than the actual speed.

...changing the attacks of the enemies is equally important. And this can work, because just like the original Doom, you can have plenty of enemies without any projectiles at all. And if they do have projectiles, they won't be guns. They could be thrown.

Shaviro said:

You can run plenty fast in many modern shooters.

But you have to sprint (which is limited), and you usually can't strafe very fast. And strafing obviously makes the biggest different in terms of how the player can handle enemies.

Shaviro said:

You're funnelled plenty in Doom though. Many of the levels are open, especially the (in my opinion) superior Doom2 levels, leaving the player to figure out the approach. You're mostly always funnelled through a colored key door. You're ALWAYS funnelled through the exit and start of the level. On a larger scale you're funnelled through the start of the game, the end of the game and a few checkpoints along the way for story updates. Yes yes, there are no scripted sequences in Doom, but the principle remains the same.

What do you mean with the last part? About the player affecting the surrounds more than vice versa? Are you going with the old "ONE MAN VERSUS HELL" deal? How is your story and what is it? So far you've done a lot of dismissing and 0.01 input on that topic. What are you advocating for here? That the story is the player shooting things? That the player dictates the plot?

Perhaps "funnel" was the wrong word. The fundamental difference I'm emphasizing is how the player has complete control and freedom to go anywhere in the level at any time in the level. Sure, the player has to go through a certain hallway to reach the end of the level, but the player can also turn around and explore some more or go kill some different enemies.

Many modern shooters will force the player to do things like experience a scripted event for a couple minutes before continuing, or being temporarily restricted to killing waves of enemies in a certain room before the door unlocks. Doom 3 had the player go from one scary scripted sequence to another scary scripted sequence, whereas the original Doom drops you into a level and says, "OK, now how will you go about tackling this area?".

But as you mentioned, there were still limits to the original Doom. So Doom 4 can take that philosophy (regarding how to approach and navigate a level) and apply that to the entire game world.

[Kaskaum]

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." - John Carmack

Hideo Kojima doesn't agree.

[Obzen]

Kaskaum said:

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." - John Carmack

Hideo Kojima doesn't agree.

and Kojima is equally right. Thing is, we are talking about a sequel in a series of high-action first person shooters with thin plots. I used the Carmack quote to better illustrate what the design philosophy of Doom is. Carmack's quote makes a lot of sense when taking into account the type of games id Software make.

[Kaskaum]

Obzen said:

and Kojima is equally right. Thing is, we are talking about a sequel in a series of high-action first person shooters with thin plots. I used the Carmack quote to better illustrate what the design philosophy of Doom is. Carmack's quote makes a lot of sense when taking into account the type of games id Software make.

There was a guy at id at the time Doom was being in development that wanted to make a deep story for doom alongside its gameplay, he even wrote what he called the "Bible of Doom". But Carmack didn't listen to that guy and he retired.

I think Carmack design worked well in 90, but relying purely on this approach without adding new ones like a better script along with a good gameplay has become dated today. One of the reasons series like Metal gear and Halo are worshiped is that they successfully mixed a good deep story along with a good gameplay(one for stealth and other for action-shooter).

It is hard to make a Doom-like game today, relying only on what made Doom great in the 90s without the game passing the feeling of an indie game. Except some platformers like Mario that doesn't need nothing but the the usual save the princess. Even CoD, the most loved-hated shooter nowadays, must have plot, without it, players wouldn't stand the campaign and just stick in the multiplayer. And as I said before, a game doesn't need to be a linear CoD game to have a plot, there are open world games nowadays with freedom of gameplay + story(mainly RPGs). Even games like Metal Gear 5 and Halo 5 are going open world without neglecting a deep storyline.

[Doomguy777]

Kaskaum said:

There was a guy at id at the time Doom was being in development that wanted to make a deep story for doom alongside its gameplay, he even wrote what he called the "Bible of Doom". But Carmack didn't listen to that guy and he retired.

I think Carmack design worked well in 90, but relying purely on this approach without adding new ones like a better script along with a good gameplay has become dated today. One of the reasons series like Metal gear and Halo are worshiped is that they successfully mixed a good deep story along with a good gameplay(one for stealth and other for action-shooter).

It is hard to make a Doom-like game today, relying only on what made Doom great in the 90s without the game passing the feeling of an indie game. Except some platformers like Mario that doesn't need nothing but the the usual save the princess. Even CoD, the most loved-hated shooter nowadays, must have plot, without it, players wouldn't stand the campaign and just stick in the multiplayer. And as I said before, a game doesn't need to be a linear CoD game to have a plot, there are open world games nowadays with freedom of gameplay + story(mainly RPGs). Even games like Metal Gear 5 and Halo 5 are going open world without neglecting a deep storyline.

Passing the feeling of an indie game? Open world, deep storyline. Man fuck that, seriously all you have been doing is talking about how DOOM should be like Halo or Titanfall. I don't want to see my beloved DOOM turn into some monstrosity that is the generic first-person shooter.

DOOM is much more than that. DOOM should keep on being what DOOM is. It's not going to pass the feeling of an indie game. If Nintendo releases a new Mario sidescroller with a story that's not exactly in your face, everyone is OK with that. But if id Software does the same thing with DOOM.... suddenly DOOM needs an elaborate story and an open world?

Come on man, DOOM isn't Fallout or Elder Scrolls. DOOM is DOOM, and I've read all of your posts.

You essentially want the new DOOM to look like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNiYvqZIBBc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHyD49DaeA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sRUZ9p4oYQ

Also here is my response to your silly Titanfall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u42KAA9oww

I also have a question for you. Why do you keep pushing for a generic feel for DOOM? Literally all of your posts either read that DOOM should feel like Halo or Titanfall or (insert generic shooter here).

DOOM isn't Metal Gear. DOOM isn't Halo. DOOM isn't Resident Evil. DOOM isn't Titanfall. DOOM is DOOM and it ought to stay that way.

On another note, just because Hideo Kojima doesn't agree, doesn't exactly make him right does it? Did he found id Software? Did he make DOOM or Wolfenstein or Quake? No he made Metal Gear, a good game in it's own right but it's not id.

John Carmack just left id Software to go work for Oculus VR. id Software should at least pay their tributes to him by following his design along with the other three founders...

John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, and Tom Hall are original id Software give or take.

Tom Hall was going to bastardize DOOM by the way. DOOM was meant to be an experience that you the player partake in. Because YOU are supposed to be the marine. YOU are supposed to feel stranded and have no help.

Tom Hall was going to make DOOM feel cheesy and not that good. That's why they cut his story ok? Also, the DOOM Bible was used again for DOOM 64 with the Unmaker weapon.

If the new DOOM game comes out, it should just do what the original did so well.

It should be atmospheric, immersive, creepy, and suspenseful. I was playing DOOM today. DOOM still holds up pretty well.


The new DOOM game should just be DOOM plain and simple. If I wanted a generic shooter I would play a generic shooter. Also, is anyone else tired of having all of these big elaborate Hollywood type touchy-feely stories?

Doesn't anyone here actually want to play a game, you know a video game? Anyone?! For real?! Why does everyone insist on pushing cinematic crap down our throats that just water down the result of playing the game?!

.... I question the sanity of myself sometimes.

Plus DOOM already had a story, demons broke through the gateway you are sent into stop the invasion on Phobos and Deimos and go into Hell and kill the Spider Mastermind and go to the Moon to go the teleporter there and end back on Earth to see it in ruins. There that's the DOOM story in a nutshell lol.

At this point I say either make a remake/reimagining of DOOM (1993) or make a DOOM 64 sequel.


I end this post/log/whatever with one message.


id Software make a DOOM 64 sequel please! Thank you.

[Kaskaum]

Halo is far from being generic, the game just revamped the FPS genre the same way Doom popularized it. And when I mentioned Titanfall, I was talking about its gameplay, that is fluent, had some Halo influences, and works perfectly in both controllers and keyboard and mouse.

Doom keyboard - PC focused only as you like - totally Doom 1 like speed with id tech 5 skin, will mean 200k-400K(see Serious Sam sales) in sales if they're lucky. The speed needs to be slower, not so slow as CoD but not so fast as Doom, a mid therm where it can conciliate both consoles and PCs.

[Guest Unregistered account]

Ok Kaskaum, I'll come out and say it in one post: your suggestions are shit.



If anything, Doom 4 needs to be exactly the same as it is now. We can't have anything slower than this, as it is needed and makes DeathMatch that little bit better.


Also, Kaskaum, stop trying to turn Doom into Resident Evil. It is not.

[Obzen]