kexen

I am reminded of this thread, and I even see some of the same arguments being thrown around. As already stated, Doom (and Quake) difficulties are designed in such a way that UV is the "complete" way to play Doom content, and it's a design baseline as a result. You can disagree with what id chose to do, but it will remain true regardless; there is no sort of misconception at play here. Indeed, an alarming number of posts right here in this thread treat this kind of thinking as "incorrect" somehow, which is rather mean-spirited by itself, but especially when it's clearly correct to some extent. This is very different from what many other video games do, where difficulty settings are often just a series of damage taken/dealt (or similar) modifiers, and whatever is called the "Medium" difficulty is treated as the baseline. This incredible discrepency should be respected, not ridiculed. I'm not sure if there's a means to disable difficulties outright, but if there were, I imagine quite a few mods wouldn't have any difficulty settings at all, and they would simply advertise their mod as a UV-class challenge. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with this, of course. I seem to remember that a few mod devs actually do specify that certain difficulties (that aren't ITYTD or NM, which are weird and we are least... mostly... in agreement on this) were or weren't really intended to be played, but I can't remember one off-hand. I'm sure someone will ask, so I should state how I play Doom and Quake content, as well as content for games with similar design philosophies. I always start on HNTR (because ITYTD is too weird) and work my way up to UV (because NM is too weird... yes, that also applies to Quake... yes, that also applies to Copper). I understand that 2/3s of this is an incomplete experience. If I were to design a game, I would encourage players to go through the same process, and I would try my best to make that process as interesting as I could. I understand that many players would realize that whatever the highest difficulty would be is either a baseline or the complete experience. I do not see anything wrong with this. I do see something very wrong with treating this as a "misconception", borne out of "ego", for "masochists" only, treating this as a "problem" that needs to be solved somehow, and so on. Please, that really has to stop. Most of the posts in this thread contain some variant of this kind of thinking. Just because there's a lot of people saying the same thing does not mean that those people are right.

Strange that nobody's mentioned these items can break the 100 standard health/armor limit. Grabbing a lot of them when you're at 100/100 is incredibly useful. Could the games use a "bigger" version of these items (say, a medkit that can break 100), though? Certainly. The Adventures of Square has such items, it's nice.

It seems pretty strange that you'd ask people to "grow up", while clearly not being able to respect that different people like different things. Of course, this kind of post doesn't exist in a bubble. There's almost always been pushback against the mere concept of difficulty in video games. Proponents of this pushback typically create labyrinths of nonsensical justifications, filled with attacks on character (all that "masochism" nonsense), and which almost always boil down to some variant of "I don't like it". Claiming that you're "thankful" for this content means little, when it's clear that you don't respect the existance of any of it. It's basically a non-apology. Whatever content you're playing, I'm guessing Hell Revealed or Deus Vult or something else that qualifies for the "pride of some old dudes", is clearly not for you. Such content is allowed to exist, and in fact very much should exist. You gotta reach a point where either you did in fact prove something to yourself, or where you just gotta accept the uncomfortable truth. I think we're all adults at this point. Have some self-awareness, please. edit: Oh, missed that "objective" post, very funny. Pro tip: building any kind of skill at anything involves a lot of repetition, trial+error, and careful study of what those before you did. That includes your precious PvP.

A lot of people are asking for a new Quake, but old Quake was so much like old Doom, and new Doom "backported" lots of Quake concepts (never mind Eternal's relationship with Champions), to the point that the only kind of new Quake we need right now is a sequel to Quake II/4. ...Which you can just do with a new Doom anyway. Eternal was all about "what if 2016, but bigger somehow". So what's bigger than Eternal? Time to make the Slayer fight aliens, which is imagery we're already approaching anyway. Maybe even have the Slayer, Ranger, Bitterman, and whoever else all team up. Imagine a(n optional) co-op take on 2016 or Eternal gameplay. That's bigger.

Seems like the situation is people want to hate the DLCs, more than it being that there's anything really wrong with them. People also like to say that Doom 1 and 2 are simply bad games. If 2016 and Eternal were not massive successes, it'd feel tough being a Doom fan sometimes. 2016 and Eternal are far more alike than they are different. They don't play like Doom 1 and 2, nor should they. Their relationship to old Doom was always about the setting, not the gameplay. It's the same idea as Doom 3, just from a different angle. The only games 2016 and Eternal really play like are things like Unreal 1 and Metroid Prime, they have nothing to do with Half-Life 2 or RtCW or whatever. Even HL2 and RtCW have nothing to do with each other, and it's concerning you lump them together like that. You really should go back and play old Doom. It's not very far removed from Wolfenstein 3D, its immediate predecessor. Old Doom doesn't even have real bosses, and the inability to shoot in any direction or even jump greatly limits what you are ever allowed to do with game design. I'm not really knocking old Doom here, I understand why it is the way it is, I grew up with it, and I'm even playing it right now. However, to say that 2016 is "far simpler and more shallow" is just objectively wrong from every angle. That aside, some of all this is buried in how people like to draw a solid line between Doom and Quake, and that practice should stop. Quake is effectively the followup to Doom, much like how Doom is effectively the followup to Wolfenstein 3D. People understood that Quake II was a gameplay sequel to Quake even if the setting was completely different, but you don't need a specific name to make this clear. Likewise, 2016 and Eternal are the followups to what id Software had done up to that point, and also reflect a kind of reboot for the entire company. Most developers work this way, especially developers that are known for making a particular kind of game.