Lack of hype... bad?

[geekmarine]

Just a thought - I understand why basically nothing is being said about Doom 4, especially given recent developments which have come to light. And I understand that's kind of id's way of doing things, especially after Doom 3 was built up for so long.

That said though, I gotta say, I just don't have the same level of enthusiasm for Doom 4 that I did for Doom 3. And it's not that Doom 3 ruined my expectations - sure it wasn't perfect, it had its flaws, but I loved it and enjoyed the hell out of it (and, continuing my notorious tradition of buying multiple copies of a Doom game, I also bought the BFG edition). I just don't care as much. Part of it is that the technology could never hope to make the jump the way Doom 3's technology did. We all remember the first screenshots and videos - it looked utterly amazing, it was something that had never been done before. I don't think if screenshots of Doom 4 were released, we'd feel that same way, at least from a technological perspective.

However, another factor, I think, is that we know virtually nothing about Doom 4. Again, given the situation, that makes sense, but even without that, I think id has made it pretty clear that they won't give away much of anything until it's pretty much done. Thing is, I kind of miss that feeling of seeing a new screenshot and getting all excited over it. It was years of waiting, yes, but it was thrilling. I'd try to imagine what it'd be like to play Doom 3. I'd have dreams about it. It all made me want the game so desperately the moment it hit the stores, and few games have that effect on me.

Yeah, hype can be a problem, because it creates expectations which can never hope to be fulfilled, and of course, giving away information too soon can be very bad if things change over the course of development. And of course, we all know what happened with that gold-plated turd knowns as DNF (wait, sorry, that wasn't even gold-plated, they just spraypainted it yellow, threw some glitter on it, and called it gold), but I dunno, I just think it's a bad idea to have a much-anticipated game in development for years and not give fans a reason to be excited.

[Touchdown]

It only seems like that now. Once they get to the point of PR hype, it won't matter.

[geo]

GTA didn't start the hype train until a year before release. It took 5+ years to make. I'm sure once they get closer to an actual finish the hype train will start. I think you'll see less enthusiasm because of Doom 3, but once the hype trail starts going everyone will love Doom 4. Its been 10 years. Very tough to keep enthusiasm for a game when not many people enjoyed Doom 3.

Having 30 enemies on screen at once seems promising. It makes me think that it will be more old school than Doom 3's in your face. Megatextures just means I won't be able to play it and people will LOL at popin. That's a big thing for people.

If Doom 4 is using iD tech 5, that's kinda worrysome. Its 3 year old tech no. Probably will be 5 year old tech when Doom 4 is released. While iD is at the cutting edge of technology, I don't think many people appreciated the technology 2 years ago when Rage was released. Let alone 2-3 years from now when Doom 4 is released.

[Touchdown]

geo said:

Having 30 enemies on screen at once seems promising. It makes me think that it will be more old school than Doom 3's in your face. Megatextures just means I won't be able to play it and people will LOL at popin. That's a big thing for people.

If Doom 4 is using iD tech 5, that's kinda worrysome. Its 3 year old tech no. Probably will be 5 year old tech when Doom 4 is released. While iD is at the cutting edge of technology, I don't think many people appreciated the technology 2 years ago when Rage was released. Let alone 2-3 years from now when Doom 4 is released.

* Don't hold your breath. The "30 enemies" comment was from before the restart. Who knows what the current version is like.
* Of course it's using Tech 5.
* People bitch and moan and complain about Megatextures and texture streaming but we'll have two more games that use this tech before DOOM 4 (Wolf and TEW) - I'm curious about their reception tech-wise.
* There's not that much that'll change graphics-wise. I mean, look at Battlefield 4. How much better can you get? Not that much, the progress will be more and more subtle now and there'll never be any game that'll make you sit with your mouth open anymore. Like Carmack said on QC, it's more about being creative with gameplay because it's not really possible to make graphics a selling point now.

[Joshua Schäferhund]

Am I the only person who doesn't really give a shit about Doom 4? I mean, the Doom community has produced so many fantastic mods (especially thanks to the release of the Doom source code) to the point where we don't really need another official Doom game and the fanbase can keep the franchise's popularity and legacy standing up on it's legs.

Besides, when you think about it iD hasn't been doing that great during the past decade. These days it seems like they're more focused on making their engines and graphics look better rather than focusing on the gameplay itself.

[DooM_RO]

You have proof?

[geo]

Patch93 said:

Am I the only person who doesn't really give a shit about Doom 4? I mean, the Doom community has produced so many fantastic mods (especially thanks to the release of the Doom source code) to the point where we don't really need another official Doom game and the fanbase can keep the franchise's popularity and legacy standing up on it's legs.

Besides, when you think about it iD hasn't been doing that great during the past decade. These days it seems like they're more focused on making their engines and graphics look better rather than focusing on the gameplay itself.

No one might care, but its not about the Doommunity and what we think. Rage only did 300,000+ sales on PC. That number is just sad. People probably read about how it was crashing on PC and went elsewhere. 2.5 million in sales elsewhere.

Graphics are a big part to Shooters. Working on engines is a good way to make money, that way you don't need to be responsible for making a good game or paying money to market it.

[Avoozl]

Graphics are probably a big part because they're probably not as expensive to develop for compared to most of the other areas in game development.

Graphics have always advanced per generation, the only difference with it since the past gens until 04 is that new graphics effects such as bumpmapping became available, and which have amplified the look of the graphics in the games.

[Koko Ricky]

We got over all the major hurdles in the 90s, graphics-wise. The jump from wireframe to flat shaded to texturized to lightmapped all presented enormous leaps in realism. These days the leaps are more like, from sprite-based fog to volumetric fog. So yeah, Doom 4 is not going to be that impressive from a technical stance, even if the idtech 5 engine is substantially improved (which I suspect it will be). It'll have to be really moody, have strong art direction and eye-catching architecture and enemy designs to turn some heads, because otherwise it'll just be another pretty shooter.

[DooM_RO]

Absolutely agree, nowadays it's very hard to impress people with graphics like in the 90's anymore, partly because back then when you doubled the poly count on a model, the difference was huuuge, today, the difference isn't so noticeable. There was a photo an an article that proved this but I can't find it.

Sure improvements in texture quality are still very noticeable but graphics are getting very close to "good enough", just look at Frostbyte 3, it looks friggin amazing. Maybe that's why the current console generation lasted so much?

Maybe Id switched to megatextures because of this? I view megatextures as a complementary feature for the art style, not necessarily an improvement in graphical fidelity.

EDIT: Oh and Geekmarine, the lack of hype is because releasing info about a game too early could damage it in the long run. Just look at RAGE, people thought it was going to be the new Fallout when Id never intended it to be that way.

[Touchdown]

DooM_RO said:

Just look at RAGE, people thought it was going to be the new Fallout when Id never intended it to be that way.

DOOM is screwed from the get go. People already have a million of different visions of what the game must be or else they'll hate it.

[PsychoGoatee]

I don't think Doom is screwed. If they make a good game, I think it'll find an audience, plus the Doom name and id making it will get it some hype.

Personally, I'm very optimistic.

[DooM_RO]

Touchdown said:

DOOM is screwed from the get go. People already have a million of different visions of what the game must be or else they'll hate it.

This is probably the most difficult thing Id could face. The biggest problem with a Doom sequel (besides enormously high expectations) is that Doom can be many different things to a lot of people and the thing is that no version is necessarily true or false. For instance, some people want only non-stop action with heavy metal blasting, others (like me) want it to be atmospheric, moody and slightly slower gameplay with a great art direction while others want a combination of this. The problem is made even bigger due to distortions of the perception of Doom because of games like Painkiller and more recently ROTT who make people think that Doom is ONLY about killing.

The problem with D3 was that it only contained the moodiness of Doom without much variation and because the length of the game, in the end it suffered for it. My ideal D4 would be 33% moodiness, 33% action, 33% exlploration.

PsychoGoatee said:

I don't think Doom is screwed. If they make a good game, I think it'll find an audience, plus the Doom name and id making it will get it some hype.

Personally, I'm very optimistic.

I think people should be cautiously optimistic tbh but with Carmack at Oculus now, I think we can expect D4 to be one of the most refined Rift experiences, possibly even the first. If done right, it could be the new Doom/Quake. I don't think Quake was necessarily famous because of the graphics (I think it was ugly) but because it provided new possibilities and the Rift could be just that. Of course the game would also have to be good.

[Touchdown]

DooM_RO said:

This is probably the most difficult thing Id could face. The biggest problem with a Doom sequel (besides enormously high expectations) is that Doom can be many different things to a lot of people and the thing is that no version is necessarily true or false. For instance, some people want only non-stop action with heavy metal blasting, others (like me) want it to be atmospheric, moody and slightly slower gameplay with a great art direction while others want a combination of this. The problem is made even bigger due to distortions of the perception of Doom because of games like Painkiller and more recently ROTT who make people think that Doom is ONLY about killing.

The problem with D3 was that it only contained the moodiness of Doom without much variation and because the length of the game, in the end it suffered for it. My ideal D4 would be 33% moodiness, 33% action, 33% exlploration.

I always say that I just want a new DOOM game and I don't care what it is as long as it's id's vision. I think (and this totally belongs in another thread) that id should not give a damn about what fans want and just focus on creating the best DOOM experience they can.

[DooM_RO]

That didn't work the last time (apparently). But yeah, as long as it's not a COD clone, I'll be...content.

[LANEGRACABRA]

The stars haven't aligned yet !

[MFG38]

PsychoGoatee said:

I don't think Doom is screwed. If they make a good game, I think it'll find an audience, plus the Doom name and id making it will get it some hype.

Personally, I'm very optimistic.

I couldn't say the same myself. Seeing as Rage included the basic modern FPS clichés (2-gun carrying limit (make it 4 in Rage's case) and regenerating health), I feel that Doom 4 is pretty much fucked in this aspect. And I'd hate to see D4 go down to that.

[Avoozl]

MFG38 said:

I couldn't say the same myself. Seeing as Rage included the basic modern FPS clichés (2-gun carrying limit (make it 4 in Rage's case) and regenerating health), I feel that Doom 4 is pretty much fucked in this aspect. And I'd hate to see D4 go down to that.

I get the feeling that they'll leave out the double barrel shotgun as dlc again like with Rage. :P

[DooM_RO]

MFG38 said:

I couldn't say the same myself. Seeing as Rage included the basic modern FPS clichés (2-gun carrying limit (make it 4 in Rage's case) and regenerating health), I feel that Doom 4 is pretty much fucked in this aspect. And I'd hate to see D4 go down to that.

Have you even PLAYED the game? You can carry every weapon just press 1-9.

[Da Werecat]

There's a stupid selector thing with only 4 slots though.

[DooM_RO]

Yeah, the interface is really dumb.

Avoozl said:

I get the feeling that they'll leave out the double barrel shotgun as dlc again like with Rage. :P

Oh boy, if they do that...OH BOY.

[Touchdown]

DooM_RO said:

That didn't work the last time (apparently).

It worked just fine for me.

Da Werecat said:

There's a stupid selector thing with only 4 slots though.

You don't have to use it, I don't see a problem.

[Da Werecat]

Touchdown said:

You don't have to use it, I don't see a problem.

The problem is that you can't cycle through the entire arsenal with "next weapon" and "previous weapon" keys.

[Touchdown]

And? Using 1-9 is faster.

[Da Werecat]

Plus at least two more keys for DLC weapons.

Anyway, to each their own.