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DOOM Eternal - the sequel to the 2016 reboot - now with The Ancient Gods DLC

Havoc

Cheerful Magician
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Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath
I saw a mission hub and they are showing his face. Decline.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
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Mar 23, 2006
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Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.
 

vortex

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Temple of Alvilmelkedic
Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.
What your definition of arena style?
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
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Apr 8, 2015
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Lusitânia
Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.

They haven't been very specific on how exactely they've improved, so we can only infer on what they've imporved by looking at available footage. At which I would say: the levels seen bigger; the arenas seem much more vertical and sparse; there's a greater use of things like jump pads, teleportation floor tiles, monkey bars, etc; there's much more enviromental hazards and traps; and finally the game has a greater variety of locations (there's confirmation of levels set in mars, hell, earth, a space station and some alien looking city).

As for why mentioning about it, it's because that was the biggest criticism they got with 2016. That after the hell level, the game loses too much steam and gets repetitive.
 
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Niklasgunner

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Aug 6, 2017
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153
Mick Gordons soundtrack is perfect for a videogame, I can't think of something cornier than an actual metal or rock soundtrack for a videogame.
 

Tehdagah

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Feb 27, 2012
Messages
9,236
Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.
Arena style is great.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.
Arena style is great.

It's better than popamole but it's not "great" by any stretch of the imagination. It's why shit like Serious Sam or Painkiller can't hold a candle to Doom or Quake or any classic FPS game, even though they can still be fun in their own right.
 

JDR13

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3,930
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The Swamp
Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.
What your definition of arena style?

Well, for me, it's when you fight enemies in waves rather than having them placed in a natural manner throughout the level. I'm not a fan of it myself. Doom 2016 has too many instances of enemies just teleporting in rather than already being in the level.
 

Efe

Erudite
Joined
Dec 27, 2015
Messages
2,597
they called it battle chess or smt like that, essential having you fight multiple times a certain amounts of monsters that supposedly require a different response. like explosives for small by numerous packs and shotgun for rest.
 

Durandal

Arcane
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Messages
2,117
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New Eden
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.
Arena style is great.

It's better than popamole but it's not "great" by any stretch of the imagination. It's why shit like Serious Sam or Painkiller can't hold a candle to Doom or Quake or any classic FPS game, even though they can still be fun in their own right.
I don't like this line of reasoning because it implies that for an FPS to be really good it must have non-linear secret-filled exploratory level design with an emphasis on resource management and handcrafted enemy placement and colored keys, because all FPS games that were really good also had non-linear secret-filled exploratory level design with an emphasis on resource management and handcrafted enemy placement and colored keys, which is quite frankly circular reasoning and only restricts the genre to a single design philosophy, whereas other genres hold multiple design philosophies with good games. It's like saying only shmups with environmental hazards like Gradius can be really good unlike bullet hell shooters like Dodonpachi that can only hope to be merely good because lol i dunno

nuDoom isn't trying to be like those boomer shooters (gameplay-wise), but rather tries to marry character action games like DMC and God Hand to the FPS genre, games which also focused on combining different expressive enemy behaviors rather than their place in the level. It's the difference between platformer level design where the threat of an enemy differs depending on where its placed, compared to 2D beat 'em ups like Streets of Rage where the stage is always flat and the 'level design' is often purely a matter of spawning enemies from the edges of the screen, but the threat of an enemy in beat 'em ups depends on the other enemies it's accompanied by. This is essentially the same approach to level/arena design that nuDoom took, but with a greater emphasis on platforming since you can shoot while moving in an FPS while attacking in a beat 'em up usually locks you in place. Nobody ever complains about arenas in beat 'em ups, and I don't think that the argument of "but they're different genres" can sufficiently explain why it wouldn't be able to work in a FPS.

I view nuDoom as more of an important rather than a good game because it's the first FPS to really apply the beat 'em up/character action design philosophy to FPS enemy design. Rather than focusing on enemy numbers like Serious Sam or placement of simple enemies like olDoom, it's about complex enemy behaviours and enemy interplay with a touch of platforming. Or at least it tries to. nuDoom drops the ball hard because the enemies can't effectively restrict the ridiculous amount of mobility you have, which makes it easy to avoid them for days and makes a lot of encounters play out the same. Good unpredictable enemy behavior and enemies that ACTUALLY PLAY OFF OF EACHOTHER is how good arcade beat 'em ups can remain interesting with each run. W/r/t arena design I also would have loved to see more environmental hazards or other interactive elements to diversify things a little in a way that actually affects gameplay, rather than arenas always being an assortment of platforms. Though the limited movement techniques in nuDoom also gimp what can be done with the arena design, which Eternal seems to work on by adding in air dashing and grappling hooks.

To then say the solution is to go back to what worked when 'what worked' is part of an entirely different design philosophy is holding back innovation (and coming from Lyric Suite, predictably traditionalist) and why the only half-decent FPSes released in the past decade were sorta clones from a game released 25 years ago. Imagine if the only decent platformers that got released nowadays only lightly strayed from Super Mario Bros.' formula. Wouldn't that be a sad state of affairs? olDoom already has a zillion WADs and mods that elevate the base gameplay to perfection. If they were to make a true sequel to Quake 1, it's not going to be compared to Quake 1, it's going to be compared to Arcane Dimensions. There's nothing to be done there that will truly wow people unless you bring something radically new to the table, and just because nuDoom shares its name with olDoom doesn't mean it's beholden to the same design philosophy. So you might as well try an entirely new direction to establish an unique identity instead of trying to be like what was before.

Meanwhile, the FPS genre has yet to see actually good boss fights, it has yet to toy around with the idea of projectile elevation (the absolute basic idea of only being able to dodge a projectile by jumping over or sliding under it) since circlestrafing still runs supreme, it has only barely seen an integration of Japanese arcade-focused game design like in Devil Daggers since the FPS genre is primarily Western, and so on. You can still make a boomer shooter that excels over its predecessors, two years ago we got Overload which I consider to be superior of the first two already good Descent games and the best FPS of the past decade for that matter, but by this point the genre has become so stagnant with boomer shooters and open world drivel. Meanwhile the idea of 'DMC/NG/God Hand but first person' as attempted by nuDoom and DESYNC begs to be explored, and for that reason I think it's counterproductive to think of arena level design as something inherently bad when we've yet to really explore it.
 

fizzelopeguss

Arcane
Joined
Oct 1, 2004
Messages
814
Location
Equality Street.
It's better than popamole but it's not "great" by any stretch of the imagination. It's why shit like Serious Sam or Painkiller can't hold a candle to Doom or Quake or any classic FPS game, even though they can still be fun in their own right.

I like how that was so offensive to the sensibilities (it was) you waltzed right passed the post praising Mick Gordon. :lol::lol::lol:
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
Any word on how they are going to "improve" the level design? They were talking about how the arena style design of the first one was too limiting, but i have no idea if that means they are going to actually gives us real level design this time. My gut feeling says they won't, but then why mention the arena style of the original had to be improved upon.
Arena style is great.

It's better than popamole but it's not "great" by any stretch of the imagination. It's why shit like Serious Sam or Painkiller can't hold a candle to Doom or Quake or any classic FPS game, even though they can still be fun in their own right.
I don't like this line of reasoning because it implies that for an FPS to be really good it must have non-linear secret-filled exploratory level design with an emphasis on resource management and handcrafted enemy placement and colored keys, because all FPS games that were really good also had non-linear secret-filled exploratory level design with an emphasis on resource management and handcrafted enemy placement and colored keys, which is quite frankly circular reasoning and only restricts the genre to a single design philosophy, whereas other genres hold multiple design philosophies with good games. It's like saying only shmups with environmental hazards like Gradius can be really good unlike bullet hell shooters like Dodonpachi that can only hope to be merely good because lol i dunno

nuDoom isn't trying to be like those boomer shooters (gameplay-wise), but rather tries to marry character action games like DMC and God Hand to the FPS genre, games which also focused on combining different expressive enemy behaviors rather than their place in the level. It's the difference between platformer level design where the threat of an enemy differs depending on where its placed, compared to 2D beat 'em ups like Streets of Rage where the stage is always flat and the 'level design' is often purely a matter of spawning enemies from the edges of the screen, but the threat of an enemy in beat 'em ups depends on the other enemies it's accompanied by. This is essentially the same approach to level/arena design that nuDoom took, but with a greater emphasis on platforming since you can shoot while moving in an FPS while attacking in a beat 'em up usually locks you in place. Nobody ever complains about arenas in beat 'em ups, and I don't think that the argument of "but they're different genres" can sufficiently explain why it wouldn't be able to work in a FPS.

I view nuDoom as more of an important rather than a good game because it's the first FPS to really apply the beat 'em up/character action design philosophy to FPS enemy design. Rather than focusing on enemy numbers like Serious Sam or placement of simple enemies like olDoom, it's about complex enemy behaviours and enemy interplay with a touch of platforming. Or at least it tries to. nuDoom drops the ball hard because the enemies can't effectively restrict the ridiculous amount of mobility you have, which makes it easy to avoid them for days and makes a lot of encounters play out the same. Good unpredictable enemy behavior and enemies that ACTUALLY PLAY OFF OF EACHOTHER is how good arcade beat 'em ups can remain interesting with each run. W/r/t arena design I also would have loved to see more environmental hazards or other interactive elements to diversify things a little in a way that actually affects gameplay, rather than arenas always being an assortment of platforms. Though the limited movement techniques in nuDoom also gimp what can be done with the arena design, which Eternal seems to work on by adding in air dashing and grappling hooks.

To then say the solution is to go back to what worked when 'what worked' is part of an entirely different design philosophy is holding back innovation (and coming from Lyric Suite, predictably traditionalist) and why the only half-decent FPSes released in the past decade were sorta clones from a game released 25 years ago. Imagine if the only decent platformers that got released nowadays only lightly strayed from Super Mario Bros.' formula. Wouldn't that be a sad state of affairs? olDoom already has a zillion WADs and mods that elevate the base gameplay to perfection. If they were to make a true sequel to Quake 1, it's not going to be compared to Quake 1, it's going to be compared to Arcane Dimensions. There's nothing to be done there that will truly wow people unless you bring something radically new to the table, and just because nuDoom shares its name with olDoom doesn't mean it's beholden to the same design philosophy. So you might as well try an entirely new direction to establish an unique identity instead of trying to be like what was before.

Meanwhile, the FPS genre has yet to see actually good boss fights, it has yet to toy around with the idea of projectile elevation (the absolute basic idea of only being able to dodge a projectile by jumping over or sliding under it) since circlestrafing still runs supreme, it has only barely seen an integration of Japanese arcade-focused game design like in Devil Daggers since the FPS genre is primarily Western, and so on. You can still make a boomer shooter that excels over its predecessors, two years ago we got Overload which I consider to be superior of the first two already good Descent games and the best FPS of the past decade for that matter, but by this point the genre has become so stagnant with boomer shooters and open world drivel. Meanwhile the idea of 'DMC/NG/God Hand but first person' as attempted by nuDoom and DESYNC begs to be explored, and for that reason I think it's counterproductive to think of arena level design as something inherently bad when we've yet to really explore it.

I knew you were going to respond with a giant wall of text the moment i clicked reply (which i'll promptly ignore 'cause it's 1 AM and i just don't feel like reading this shit lmao).

I understand you are into that whole shmup thing and you are looking at it purely from that pure arcade perspective and i'm not going to argue there isn't a place for that kind of thing in first person shooters and to each their own etc etc.

HOWEVER, a couple of brief counterpoints here. First of all, it's Doom, the granddaddy of boomer shooters. Now sure you can argue there's no reason this series HAS to follow the same formula all the time but if there is a game that one would expect to be Doom-like has to be the one called... Doom. Seriously.

Secondly, their rationale for moving towards a more arcadish style of game has less to do with a desire to alter the formula for the sake of novelty and has more to do with the fact they were afraid the old style would alienate the masses of mouth breathers out there whom apparently find traditional level design confusing (even though there's nothing difficult at all about those levels). You don't have to take my word for it, they claimed this themselves, when they said they were keeping the "spirit" of the original while making the game palatable to modern audiences, which obviously means they had to dumb it down.

Third, the boomer shooters WERE in fact a tad more cerebral (not to mention more immersive) than this arcade-like stuff we are getting with nuDoom, and some of us prefer it that way. Doom is known as an action game but that's a bit of a red herring unless you remember that Doom was the action version of stuff like Ultima Underworld, and was in fact originally intended to be an RPG of sort. So even though the game is pure action and has probably some of the most perfect gunplay of any shooter that followed in its wake, it still has a connection to a whole different kind of pedigree, one that Codexers have a greater level of kinship hence why your Devil Daggers game has gained little traction here, as good as it may be at what it sets out to do, because those of us who played Doom when it came out were also playing Ultima, Wizardry, System Shock and so forth. People who never lived through that era and only know Doom for it's reputation as the rip and tear game think Doom was all about "shooting" simply because there's "shooter" in the name don't know that this is the "shooter" version of a whole different kind of games, as i said. Some shooters that followed Doom directly were even a bit "RPGish", like Hexen, which shows exactly that the way people saw those games then is different from how they look at them now. Doom is basically "what would happen if we took Ultima Underworld and made an arcade game out of it" and not "it's an arcade game!". There's a difference.

BTW, you mention Japanese games but you are forgetting there is a prominent Japanese game where stuff like enemy placement and level design are important, that game being Dark Souls. I would have been much more of ok with nuDoom if they had taken the latter as an inspiration instead of whatever it is that you are talking about (le fuck is God Hand?).

[EDIT] For the record, the importance of level design in Doom is demonstrated by the fact they keep making levels for it two decades after. That shows how central level design was to the love people had for the game.
 
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Joined
Nov 29, 2016
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1,832
Oh shit boi, Durandal vs Lyric Suite, two masters of dialectical discourse via the medium of impenetrable walls of texts. Here come two cockslingers - taking names and citing sources, hot damn! - eager to stick their intellectual chodes into our squirming brainholes through our eager eyeholes, yo.

Meticulous analysis vs gnostic mysteries; pure reason vs divinely-inspired intuition; autistic savanthood vs flat out madness; who will win???????
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
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Land of Rape & Honey ❤️
Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Oh shit boi, Durandal vs Lyric Suite, two masters of dialectical discourse via the medium of impenetrable walls of texts. Here come two cockslingers - taking names and citing sources, hot damn! - eager to stick their intellectual chodes into our squirming brainholes through our eager eyeholes, yo.

Meticulous analysis vs gnostic mysteries; pure reason vs divinely-inspired intuition; autistic savanthood vs flat out madness; who will win???????

And one deranged fangirl, watching from the sidelines, shlicking away in eager anticipation.
 

Durandal

Arcane
Joined
May 13, 2015
Messages
2,117
Location
New Eden
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
HOWEVER, a couple of brief counterpoints here. First of all, it's Doom, the granddaddy of boomer shooters. Now sure you can argue there's no reason this series HAS to follow the same formula all the time but if there is a game that one would expect to be Doom-like has to be the one called... Doom. Seriously.

Secondly, their rationale for moving towards a more arcadish style of game has less to do with a desire to alter the formula for the sake of novelty and has more to do with the fact they were afraid the old style would alienate the masses of mouth breathers out there whom apparently find traditional level design confusing (even though there's nothing difficult at all about those levels). You don't have to take my word for it, they claimed this themselves, when they said they were keeping the "spirit" of the original while making the game palatable to modern audiences, which obviously means they had to dumb it down.

People aren't wrong to have misplaced expectations because DOOM shares the same name with DOOM and because interviews showed that the developers were also designing with consoles in mind, but (un)met player expectations and author's intent have no bearing on the objective quality of the final product. I only wish that people would look at nuDoom as its own thing in order to be able to better understand its potential and flaws, rather than trying to compare it to olDoom which it is barely even trying to be in the first place (gameplay-wise).

By now I have written up to 4 revisions for my big laundry list of gripes with nuDoom and am soon planning to write a 5th, yet more often than not I find myself defending nuDoom because the reasons used to attack it are often plain fucktarded.
 

soulburner

Cipher
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
809
NuDoom is a modern game that shares only the main theme with the original. As its own, it's a very good game. We who expected more Doom in Doom were disappointed, but I do find this game a good stress relieve after a hard day. Play for half an hour, die and maybe play again the next day. I do hope to finish it before Doom Eternal and also that the new game will indeed use different gameplay mechanics than locked down arenas, so I could run away from a swarm of monsters to hide and look for a medkit or something.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
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Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
It's definitely an arena shooter a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. Same for Doom 3 being survival horror a lot of the time but still being a solid game. The more you detach how much you enjoy something from what you expected it to be, the better.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
Doom 3 was console garbage. It wasn't much of a "survival horror", it was just a neutered action game where you couldn't dodge shit because your movement was too slow and the levels were too cramped. The atmosphere was great thanks to the stunning lighting effects and even though the textures were kinda low res the texturing work in itself was pretty good too. The game had a great techno-environment. A System Shock game looking like that would have been amazing, but Doom 3 was not System Shock sadly and aside for the visuals that game didn't have a lot going for it.

I got the hardware to play Doom 2016 now. Maybe i'll like it once it get to play it long enough, but right off the bat, even putting the gameplay style aside for a second, i'm already disappointed by the sounds and the monsters. They are all orange, they all sound the same and shoot the same shit, which is massive decline from the original, where every monster was perfectly distinct and instantly recognizable through the design and sounds they made.
 

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