Things id got wrong

Doom is great and all, but it's not perfect. What things about Doom do you feel that id Software got wrong?

(Engine bugs are pretty low-hanging fruit and have been extensively documented. Pie in the sky features that weren't implemented are also kind of out of scope. I'm more talking about design decisions, or design overlooks, that could have been pointed out to the creators in 1993 / 1994 and fixed / changed, if only someone had the wherewithal.)

I'll start:

* The Doomguy can't decide if he wears gloves or not, or if he's left-handed or right handed. Minor, but a pretty pointless discrepancy.

* The Spiderdemon should have been the Episode 2 boss and the Cyberdemon the Episode 3 boss. Does anyone disagree with this? The Cyberdemon is clearly the "real" endboss of Doom. I think Sandy Petersen even once admitted that this turned out to be a mistake.

* No animated waterfall texture in Doom or Doom 2, which caused level designers untold amounts of grief. There's a slimefall and a bloodfall, but no waterfall? Come on!!

The first thing that always springs to my mind in terms of missteps in what is otherwise a phenomenally well-balanced game is the lost soul's HP--it's too much. I feel like I ought to be able to kill the little bastards with one quality shotgun shell, not 2-3, an otherwise very simple fodder enemy doesn't need to slow the pace quite that much (more an issue in the original Doom, with its lack of the SSG, although in some levels the berserk pack's a nice substitute). A shame, since they're an underrated enemy in other respects, especially their lack of an 'activation' sound, making them a potential stealthy ambusher in a way that even specters in the dark can't quite match.

Edit: I mean I should be able to kill them with one shell a majority of the time, of course. I've made a few of the rare 1-shell lost soul kills in my time--they feel too satisfying to be so rare.

Linguica said:

* The Spiderdemon should have been the Episode 2 boss and the Cyberdemon the Episode 3 boss. Does anyone disagree with this? The Cyberdemon is clearly the "real" endboss of Doom. I think Sandy Petersen even once admitted that this turned out to be a mistake

I actually feel like from a pistol start, E3M8 plays better than E2M8. Gathering the ammo from around the outside while getting perforated is more dangerous than just endlessly strafing a Cyberdemon.

Linguica said:
* The Spiderdemon should have been the Episode 2 boss and the Cyberdemon the Episode 3 boss. Does anyone disagree with this? The Cyberdemon is clearly the "real" endboss of Doom. I think Sandy Petersen even once admitted that this turned out to be a mistake.

I never understood the dislike towards the Spiderdemon.

i don't think it's so much dislike as it is that she's thoroughly underwhelming as a final boss compared to the Cyberdemon. even if a Cyberdemon can be completely harmless once you learn how to circle around it, there's something a lot more intimidating about that hulking behemoth than the brains on legs are.

the Mastermind's attack is far more dangerous than the Cyber's, though. unless you've got the proper weaponry to kill a Mastermind easy.

Abandoning the episodic format in Doom 2 is my biggest beef.

Final Doom would've been a better sequel if they could have thrown in some new monsters, weapons, power ups and engine modifications before commissioning level designers - I know this wasn't done because they didn't want to spend any more time on Doom.

I think the Mastermind was fine as an end boss for E3 because of how open that map was, it made it truly terrifying and dangerous.

Lame as hell in E4 though.

Linguica said:

* No animated waterfall texture in Doom or Doom 2, which caused level designers untold amounts of grief. There's a slimefall and a bloodfall, but no waterfall? Come on!!

I feel the lack of of a lavafall texture hurt as well.

I have a very specific beef with the positioning of Map05's berserk pack.

The cyberdemon is the brawn, the spiderdemon the brain. It wouldn't make sense to reverse their placement. You don't fight the puppeteer before the puppet, otherwise there's nothing left to fight.

Sure, there's the IoS in Doom 2. But within Doom 1 they followed that trope, and regardless of the story, the brute/mastermind imagery is strong here.

50 rockets are way, way too much, especially when compared to the other ammo types. 100 rockets with the backpack are completely insane, but the pack is generally a bad item that throws off any balance continuous playing could've had.

The scale of the secret Wolf3d levels is just jarringly wrong, it's like either no one ever tested them, or they literally couldn't care less about the secrets. I guess the latter is the case, given the all-permeating sloppiness.

Phml said:

The cyberdemon is the brawn, the spiderdemon the brain. It wouldn't make sense to reverse their placement. You don't fight the puppeteer before the puppet, otherwise there's nothing left to fight.

Sure, there's the IoS in Doom 2. But within Doom 1 they followed that trope, and regardless of the story, the brute/mastermind imagery is strong here.

Very well said.

the Baron could stand to be a little more dangerous, it's just a thousand HP blob right now. I wonder how different the game would be if someone had said during playtesting, "look, the end boss of Knee-deep is just a pair of steroidal imps, couldn't we make its shots home towards the player/it move faster/its melee attack be an instant kill"...

Speaking about lost souls, I think id should've gone all the way with their "stealthiness" and remove their roaming sound. Although I'm sure some people would be annoyed by it.

It would also "fix" the Doom 2 bug where they could go through a wall and confuse you with their frustrated roars from the void.

dew said:

50 rockets are way, way too much, especially when compared to the other ammo types.

Well, it's not like you can spam RL left and right without any consideration for your health or ammo (rockets are typically rare on levels).

Linguica said:

The Spiderdemon should have been the Episode 2 boss and the Cyberdemon the Episode 3 boss. Does anyone disagree with this? The Cyberdemon is clearly the "real" endboss of Doom. I think Sandy Petersen even once admitted that this turned out to be a mistake.

Rather, it should have been made tougher and/or more lethal, and not be placed in a map which highlighted its weaknesses.

• Melee attacks don't work very well
  
• Wasted space in the status bar
  
• Using a tint for the berserk pack that implies the effect is temporary
  
• Not having a map screen for E4 (or doom 2 I guess)
  
• Making the BFG use the same ammo as the plasma gun (or not at least balancing its ammo usage so having the BFG doesn't make the PG redundant)
  
• Giving lost souls about twice as much health as they should have
  
• Too many similar monsters in doom 1
  
• That one E4 map no one likes
  
• Not enough types of flying monster, even in doom 2
  
• No slow melee monster

One thing I remember thinking at the time was that - having gone to DOOM from Wolf 3D - the secret level(s) were something of a disappointment, insofar as they were more or less ordinary levels (especially so for E1M9). In Wolf 3D, the secret levels use music and textures (and colour schemes) that you don't see elsewhere in the game, which made them feel somewhat mysterious, and so made sense of their being secret within the context of the game's narrative. I remember being very excited to see what id had in store for E1M9 (admittedly, after having cheated by reading the guide in the DOOM FAQ), only to be met with more of the same :(

Da Werecat said:

Well, it's not like you can spam RL left and right without any consideration for your health or ammo (rockets are typically rare on levels).

That would only show a greater understanding for the weapon and its power from the mappers than from the guy who ultimately decided that the pickup limit would be whopping 50.

Btw, I think only the original episodes skimp on rockets. It makes sense there, their pathetic difficulty would make it too easy to chew through everything.

- annoying plasma gun shooting sound (Heh, I'm pretty used to it and it doesn't really bother me nowadays at all.)

- annoying Arachnotron walking sound (especially when there's like 20 of them around)

- you automatically switch to the newly picked up weapon even if you're just continuously shooting right now and it just takes forever in these situations

- you always have to press slot 1 twice if you have both berserk and chainsaw and want to use berserk - Why isn't there an option even in the advanced source ports to change this?!

dew said:

That would only show a greater understanding for the weapon and its power from the mappers than from the guy who ultimately decided that the pickup limit would be whopping 50.

Well, yes, the usage of any weapon by level designers can make or break it. For example, many people complain about SSG being overpowered, and one of the main reasons is that shells are typically very abundant.

Personally, I'm pleased when shells are taking a back seat compared to rockets on a level, because spamming rockets is a nice change of pace.

Grain of Salt said:

Melee attacks don't work very well
,,,

No slow melee monster[/list]

Strangely, the Pinky (and the Spectre) is the only monster whose attack is slow, and whose melee doesn't work very well precisely for this reason. It's also the only one which can actually miss in melee.

The invisibility effect could've been applied to other monsters as well. Can you imagine partially invisible Lost Souls? Ouch....

Maes said:

It's also the only one which can actually miss in melee.

Even if we ignore combo (projectile + melee) attacks, we still have revenant.

Some of the weapons(notably the SSG) are fading the frames way too slow because of that you can see two frames at once.

Snakes said:

I feel the lack of of a lavafall texture hurt as well.

That's what DBRAIN is for :)
I think that matches the lava floor much better than when mappers used to use a scrolling COMPBLUE as a waterfall.

EDIT: nevermind, dbrain tuttifruttis in vanilla

The Chasm

TimeOfDeath said:

That's what DBRAIN is for :)
I think that matches the lava floor much better than when mappers used to use a scrolling COMPBLUE as a waterfall.

EDIT: nevermind, dbrain tuttifruttis in vanilla

It needs editing to serve such a purpose, if you look closely, bits of flesh from the IoS' texture are part of the DBRAIN texture too. Very noticable when used as a lavafall.

Inkie said:

The Chasm

Things Inkie got wrong

I think the distinction between green and blue armor was not done well. Most people playing the game never had any idea that blue armor didn't just give you a higher armor count but was more protective as well.

I don't know how you would fix that problem really, except to remove the different armor levels and just have blue armor be a bigger green armor, basically. They could have made alternate status bar face graphics with, say, a helmet for green armor and a full facemask for blue armor, but that would probably be adding needless complexity.

At least the code for animating a set of waterfall textures exists.

Anyway, I think Doom 2 could've used intermission maps. When I finally got a copy of Doom for the PC, those were the most striking difference from Doom 2 and the console versions for me. Such great artwork, the static backdrops in Doom 2 are really disappointing by comparison. Probably would've helped people accept Doom 2's maps thematically, too.

All of Sandy Petersen's maps really could've used a retexture pass. The console versions of his maps almost always look better, just because they couldn't use every texture in the wad in every level. I've got nothing against (most of) his maps design-wise, but I really hate his texturing.

Icon of Sin kinda sucks. Not the concept (though I'm sure many would disagree), the design and execution. It's just too obvious you're shooting at a wall in a badly textured, minimal detail map.

Moving away from id, whoever decided to make the plasma gun in Doom 64 buzz constantly should be slapped.

-edit-

Agreed on the armor levels. I wish they'd put an icon next to the armor label on the status bar showing whether you've got green or blue. Gives you info while being no where near as ridiculous looking as Boom recoloring the numbers.

Linguica said:

They could have made alternate status bar face graphics with, say, a helmet for green armor and a full facemask for blue armor, but that would probably be adding needless complexity.

Armor picture, later seen in Quake.

Ragnor said:

It needs editing to serve such a purpose, if you look closely, bits of flesh from the IoS' texture are part of the DBRAIN texture too.

The funny thing is that these bits of flesh are not even aligned with the rest of the IoS image. And they can't be aligned, unless you crop the DBRAIN texture differently.

Although it's pretty much impossible to spot in the game.