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Spinesplitter

What keeps Doom going to this day besides custom maps??

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Tell me what you mostly think keeps Doom still going strong to this day besides the fact of all the user made maps we have today.

I believe it's the mods such as "Brutal Doom" and "Real Guns Advance" that bring Doom up to a whole new level of awesomeness! These mods and others like this, to me, keep it modernly entertaining while keeping the core gameplay from too getting boring or old.

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What keeps it going to this day? People who appreciate video games for the entertainment and the importance of gameplay. But even we're limited; we must continue our legacy through our future generations!

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I always seem to come back to Doom as my #1 game !! I grew up with IDs games from Keen to Quake4. But IMO Doom hit a sweet spot between arcade action (Pac-Man and Galaga) and the FPS experience that we still have today.

Now that I'm all "grown up" with three kids of my own, gaming as a whole isn't as big a priority to me.

Doom fits my needs perfectly, I can jump in and play 10 min for some quick "arcade" action, or get sucked in to a new WAD and play for hours.

It says somthing when my 7 year old is playing Wii (Mario Galaxy 2, Mariokart, etc) and he sees me jump into a game of Doom... he immediately drops the Wiimote and says "OOOH DOOOOOOM !!! Can I play !?!?" (I turn OFF the monsters) ;)

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To the thread title, nothing. Doom's gameplay mechanics are certainly unparalleled among FPS games, but if we only had the iwads to play at least I would have gotten bored of them a long time ago.

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Even if the pwads didn't exist, I'd still do an infrequent play-through of the original maps when I needed a Doom fix. Actually, it's the iwads that still win me over to this day. The pwads keep me from having to immediately replay everything official.

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The gameplay is just really tight, it's like why people still play Q3A/QL or BW etc

edit:

Marnetmar said:

Brutaldoom has become quite popular on 4chan actually.


Could you elaborate please? I haven't browsed 4chan in 4+ years so I'm pretty far out of the loop now~

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I'm sure that the ability to create maps and other assets so easily helps. Humans just love showing off their creations to their fellows. That's the main reason I'm here. That and I love seeing my fellow humans creations. Its not this easy to do for very many video games.

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Even without PWADs, there would still be deathmatch and coop, challenges on different skill levels, etc.

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Although lately I've been blasting through random IWAD maps from time to time, I'd probably not still be playing Doom as often as I do if I didn't have an infinite amount of land to conquer in the Doom Universe. In fact I probably wouldn't be playing any video games at all. The only games I have the fondest memories of were ones that granted me the ability to edit it's content.

Jetpack was the first game I ever played that came with a level editor. Shortly after that was Meteor, and then Starcraft.

Doom still would always have a place in my heart but playing the same levels over and over and over again would get stale no matter how good a game is.

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lupinx-Kassman said:

I think i'll just be honest. If it weren't for the endless custom content and the community the game spawned, I probably wouldn't still be playing it.


Pretty much this. I love this game and etc, but most likely if it wasn't for those endless custom content I'd probably just give it a go seldomly.

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I have a vague suspicion that most of these "What keep Doom going"/"Why do you still play such as old game?!" threads are made by gaming industry shills/game devs out of ideas, trying to find what the "secret" is. Well, PROTIP: make a game that doesn't suck and is pleasureable to play and control.

If in doubt what does mean, finish Doom yourself, and play a good dose of arcade classics from the 80s/90s for padding. Then ask that question to youself again.

If I should sum it up in one paragraph, in Doom you can literally enter monster ass-blasting action within seconds of starting the game and with controls so intuitive that you can't miss and won't regret/bitch/moan about till the end of the game. No lag, no sticiness, no weird actions. Well, suck my know and call me Charlie, if that ain't just like an arcade game!

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Maes said:

I have a vague suspicion that most of these "What keep Doom going"/"Why do you still play such as old game?!" threads are made by gaming industry shills/game devs out of ideas, trying to find what the "secret"

They'd never do that, because making a game that's actively played +10 years to the future is financially stupid. Best make games that sell great the first few months and are then forgotten (so that people will buy the next game, and the one after, and the one after that...).

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The thing is, once you have Doom and a few other games equally as awesome, you don't need to keep buying those other lame ones. You just spend like $20-50 on steam/ebay/craigslist and you're set for life.

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"making a game that's actively played +10 years to the future is financially stupid."

I dunno, a major trend of late has been to resurrect your old catalogue. id still sells (even outsourced development for an episode) Doom, Commander Keen is even out there on Steam, Square-Enix milks their 8/16-bit era games by constantly releasing them on latest handhelds/phones, Nintendo has the whole "Virtual Console" thing on the Wii, and so on...

So clearly, it's worth at least some effort to expend resources on decades-old software!

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Vorpal said:

"making a game that's actively played +10 years to the future is financially stupid."

I dunno, a major trend of late has been to resurrect your old catalogue. id still sells (even outsourced development for an episode) Doom, Commander Keen is even out there on Steam, Square-Enix milks their 8/16-bit era games by constantly releasing them on latest handhelds/phones, Nintendo has the whole "Virtual Console" thing on the Wii, and so on...

So clearly, it's worth at least some effort to expend resources on decades-old software!

Of course if you've got decades old software that enough people want to buy it'll be worth it to sell that software, but designing software for that purpose from ground up is something that no game publisher would ever allow. Plus, selling Doom on Steam doesn't really require any resources to expend on id's part (just throw in Dosbox and you're set!), the virtual console on Wii just needs an emulator and then they can throw all NES roms they've got stored at it.

So, obviously you can sell old games with relatively little effort, but planning for that as your business strategy is...eh, not very smart.

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Vorpal said:

I dunno, a major trend of late has been to resurrect your old catalogue.


id is pretty much an anomaly in this respect, as it's one of the oldest PC gaming companies still alive on the modern PC gaming market that still counts for something.

As for moddability, it actually never made it an official selling point for Doom. Id made (and makes) money from selling new licenses for ports on consoles, iPhone etc. which can't even use PWADs at all, so moddability has really a minor impact in this sense. Other games that they still sell (e.g. Commander Keen series) aren't even moddable. And don't forget the engine technology licenses.

Historical console & arcade-era companies such as TAITO, Konami, Sega etc. may also live a "second youth" through official emulators but that's a different beast altogether.

And then you have a horde of companies that appeared overnight (especially on the Wintel gaming business), made a game or two trying to make a quick buck, and then disappeared. Most of modern games are made by such companies or the very least, backed by publishers with a similar mentality. No engine licensing (often they are engine licensees), no desire to start a saga, no particular inspiration or innovation other than being market driven 100%, since that's what the marketing pointy haired believe in.

Id had a unique chance (due more to the fame of their once flagship product) to repeatedly capitalize on their previous work, and the even more unique luck to actually make it profitable. There are as old companies that wouldn't have such luck if they attempted something similar , and to be honest, I would go back to buying and playing an official DOSBOX package for e.g. Cyberbykes even if it was on sale.

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Commander Keen is very moddable and has been so for a long time. I remember the first map editors had an ASCII interface like a roguelike.

People have been tinkering on it with hex editors but it never got a source release.

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Sigvatr said:

Commander Keen is very moddable and has been so for a long time. I remember the first map editors had an ASCII interface like a roguelike.

People have been tinkering on it with hex editors but it never got a source release.


And I had hex-"modded" MS-DOS games like Mortal Kombat and Alladin, but I would not call them moddable in this sense. Arkanoid 2 and Stunts Car Racer came with their own level designer, but that didn't ensure them commercial success. Remember what I said about id actually not betting a dime on Doom's moddability and instead going for the sure thing like engine licensing (the only major exception being the Master Levels pack).

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Well balanced and entertaining multiplayer is a big factor, regardless of the fact that many popular gametypes and features are not available in vanilla Doom. The core elements of the game just make them work well.

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If there were no custom levels I guess I'd concentrate on speed running the original levels, which I do sometimes, and playing some deathmatch games online occasionally.

Yeah, custom levels add a lot by reviving the game's exploratory aspect and expanding play, but without the core dynamics and mechanics of the game, any number of new add-ons would likely have been pointless. Other games have mods too, but I don't play them.

"Arcana", as Lee Killough called it, also keeps it alive. That is, discovering details and quirks about the game that we weren't aware of before. An example posted yesterday.

One last thing is that it's easier to get connected and play online than it ever was, be that with a port or vanilla (through IPX tunneling or emulation) or as Phobus noted, to just interact with other players and fans.

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The power of Satan.

Oh, and uh the impeccable gameplay. As mentioned in this thread, a dearth of user maps don't help if the gameplay sucks.

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Spinesplitter said:

Tell me what you mostly think keeps Doom still going strong to this day besides the fact of all the user made maps we have today.

I believe it's the mods such as "Brutal Doom" and "Real Guns Advance" that bring Doom up to a whole new level of awesomeness! These mods and others like this, to me, keep it modernly entertaining while keeping the core gameplay from too getting boring or old.


I haven't played either of these mods, and have little interest in them.

You say "besides user made maps" but I think it should be lumped together as "custom content," which would include your favorite mods.

Without modding the only community would be for demos

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kmxexii said:
[B... a dearth of user maps don't help if the gameplay sucks. [/B]

but it helps immensely if the game-play is great.

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