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

[OctavianRomulus]

Yeah no. If the decision makers liked shooters glory kills would not be in the game, at least not the way they are implemented.

We've been having the Glory Kill discussion for over 4 years now. Think about that. And as always, I'd be more convinced by this argument if GKs had actually brought the Doom 2016 gameplay to a standstill or something.

As it stands, at best people absolutely love these on lower difficulties, because they blend well with the speed of the combat in Doom 2016, or at worst in higher difficulties they are to be used when strategically viable instead of all the time.

We've been at this for years and years, and the anti-GK argument has never changed. I gotta be honest and say that people speaking out against them mostly come across as having never actually played the game, and it's always the same arguments repeated over and over and over, before Doom 2016 came out and years after, and now Doom Eternal is coming out and this argument is still going on, and it is still mostly the same.

At this rate I'm thinking I'll be on my deathbed some day reading arguments against Glory Kills... and they'll be the same as they were in 2016, and 2020, and 2067. This never ends.

I like Glory Kills but I don't like the way they are balanced. Blood had a similar system with the hearts so I an not against enemies dropping health, there's just too much health dropping from GKs, to the point where traditional medkits are a lot less valuable, which in turn affects exploration and therefore level design. If medkits are less valuable then they are not great secret items so you have to rely on upgrades and powerups to for secret rewards, and you can only put so many of those in the game.

In my opinion, they should keep you alive and supplied to the next pickup, not take you from 20 health to 90. Let's say once per fight you can go from 20 to 90, after that you can get up to 25. Medkits could give back 50. It wouldn't be too much since 200 health is the real 100 in Doom 2016 and it seems to be the same in Eternal.

 

[abija]

As it stands, at best people absolutely love these on lower difficulties, because they blend well with the speed of the combat in Doom 2016

Just watch that trailer where the guy clearly knows what he's doing. How can you say they blend well with the speed when they just constantly break the flow. On lower difficulties you can ignore them but it's not exactly an option when you ramp up difficulty because they are tied so much in the resource system.

 

[Biscotti]

Yep, I remember I had to use the rune that significantly sped up GKs in Doom 2016 because without it the constant interruptions in combat where honestly aggravating. I don't share the same level of hatred for NuDoom as most people here, but the Glory Kill mechanic is something I could definitely do without. It's way too powerful to the point it remains a get out of jail card you can resort to when you fuck up even on Nightmare difficulty, and the implications it carries for encounter design are not to be underestimated.

 

[passerby]

Yeah, that's worse, because if enemies kept attacking you, you'd have more of those parts of the game where their attack animation will happen when your gk animation ends. Plus it's first person and not person so it doesn't matter hat you don't see the others attacking you.

This was my whole point, it wouldn't be mandatory and you would use it sparingly and opportunistically, mostly just for fun and flavor. Why do you think being expected to perform gameplay flow destroying GKs all the time is desirable ?

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

We've been having the Glory Kill discussion for over 4 years now.

 

[Curratum]

The glory kills are only there so the devs have much less work to do in balancing health, armor and ammo pickups on the maps, guys, let's get real.

 

[passerby]

GKs are there mostly because they produce catchy "gameplay" marketing vids and to satisfy awesome button pushers.

Resources pinata is independent from GKs and is there to remove resource management, while pretending it's there for oldskul cred.

 

[Durandal]

The glory kills are only there so the devs have much less work to do in balancing health, armor and ammo pickups on the maps, guys, let's get real.

If you try playing nuDoom without ever upgrading your max ammo capacity like I just did, you'll find that you have to rely on chainsawing and the item pickups in the arena a lot more than before.

The main problem with the chainsaw is that its ammo yield scales with your max ammo because it always gives you a third of each ammo type back, so at the start each chainsaw kill will only drop like 6 shells/30 bullets/4 rockets/etc., which in practice is just a pittance and expects you to a) spread out your weapon usage for every ammo type so you can get the most out of each chainsaw kill and b) know where the ammo pick-ups are. But when you have fully upgraded your ammo, each chainsaw kill drops 20 shells/75 bullets/10 rockets, meaning you can often just stick to one weapon for an entire encounter without having to worry about ammo. And on top of that, each time you upgrade max ammo you also upgrade the max chainsaw fuel capacity up to a seven, which means you can potentially refill a third of every ammo type up to seven types on top of each chainsaw fuel pickup being worth three pips, which in turn means ammo will NEVER become a concern.

Basically, go replay nuDoom and never upgrade Max Ammo and see how it plays out in the later missions (one upgrade to Max Ammo is fine tho).

If you restrict yourself this way and play on Nightmare, you will find that there is some more thought placed into item placement than you think. They follow a similar principle in how big items like Mega Health/Red Armor in Quake 3 maps are always placed in places that are difficult to get to and leave you highly vulnerable. In nuDoom, items are usually placed at the edges of an arena or other places off the beaten path. But trying to grab them puts you in a constricted space with little breathing room, so it's rather risky to go for... in theory. The AI doesn't really make it a top priority to surround you if you try to enter one of these item zones. And rather unfortunately, higher difficulties in nuDoom also scale down the yields you get from health/armor pick-ups in order to obviously make the game harder, but the problem is that on a difficulty where almost each attack shaves off 50 HP and the most frequent health pick-ups being only +15 HP makes it a risk that isn't all that worth taking. This doesn't seem to be the case anymore for Nightmare difficulty in Eternal, however.

GKs where enemies just stop attacking you are just as retarded, immersion and gameplay flow breaking, as cinematic takedowns in nu Deus Ex games.

I'd be fine with them, if enemies kept attacking you, so you would seek to isolate victims, or break the line of sight for a second to perform them and executed enemies didn't throw rainbow pinata, saving a bit of ammo and watching cool death anim should be enough of a reward.

Yeah, that's worse, because if enemies kept attacking you, you'd have more of those parts of the game where their attack animation will happen when your gk animation ends. Plus it's first person and not person so it doesn't matter hat you don't see the others attacking you.

Think about it like how charging the Gauss Cannon in Siege Mode makes you unable to move at all. It'd be completely broken if you could shoot something so powerful while flying at 80mph, so instead you have to assess the situation to see whether it's safe enough for you to stand still for around two seconds and get off a quick shot before getting interrupted by an enemy. The same tactic would apply to how you go about Glory Kills if you removed their invincibility, though the rewards would have to be more worth it for such a now-risky move. Even in its current implementation, if you do a Glory Kill on Nightmare while another demon is nearby, you'll get hit right as the Glory Kill ends before you can control your character again, so the invincibility in this (rather frequent) situation won't do you much good. Taking this into account, if we removed GK invincibility from the outset, it would be incredibly obvious to any player that you can't just spam Glory Kills without getting hit and have to think about when and where to use it. It would probably be a good idea to allow you to turn the camera left and right 90 degrees while doing a Glory Kill, however.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I like Glory Kills but I don't like the way they are balanced.

On Nightmare, which is as far as I'm concerned the only real way to play the game, Glory Kills can give you +30HP at most when you're on low health and the minimum value of +5HP when you're at high health. Generally you're in between so you should get +15HP or something.

As for the medkits, the large ones (these are really rare) give you +30HP, the medium ones give you +15HP and the small ones give you +1HP.

I think it's balanced well.

 

[DalekFlay]

As it stands, at best people absolutely love these on lower difficulties, because they blend well with the speed of the combat in Doom 2016, or at worst in higher difficulties they are to be used when strategically viable instead of all the time.

This is key, IMO. I don't even think it requires nightmare or whatever (I played on one above normal, iirc). The simple fact is glory kills are optional, and something you only do when you need ammo or health desperately. People act like they constantly happen, and the game constantly takes control away from you, which is just untrue. I wonder if it's like those people who can't stop themselves from using exploits in an RPG though... "I could get more health, and I can't stop myself from doing it." It would explain why there's so much hate over a completely optional system.

 

[Durandal]

As it stands, at best people absolutely love these on lower difficulties, because they blend well with the speed of the combat in Doom 2016, or at worst in higher difficulties they are to be used when strategically viable instead of all the time.

This is key, IMO. I don't even think it requires nightmare or whatever (I played on one above normal, iirc). The simple fact is glory kills are optional, and something you only do when you need ammo or health desperately. People act like they constantly happen, and the game constantly takes control away from you, which is just untrue. I wonder if it's like those people who can't stop themselves from using exploits in an RPG though... "I could get more health, and I can't stop myself from doing it." It would explain why there's so much hate over a completely optional system.

Funnily enough, there's actually a strategy where you can get more health without Glory Kills. When you're low on health, killing any enemy will make them drop health regardless of whether they were Glory Killed or not, albeit a bit less than if they were Glory Killed. But this means that when you're at low health, by killing several enemies the regular way you cause more health to be dropped than if you were to Glory Kill a single demon. The tricky part being that you have to stay away from the demons since you auto-attract nearby health items which would heal you and prevent demons from spawning more health, and obviously you'd have to stay at low health for a while longer to execute this.

 

[JDR13]

So much gnashing of teeth over something that we're not being forced to use. I don't mind GK myself, but the additional ammo drop is dumb.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

So much gnashing of teeth over something that we're not being forced to use. I don't mind GK myself, but the additional ammo drop is dumb.

I feel the same but there's too much ammo. The pickups are devalued.

 

[JDR13]

So much gnashing of teeth over something that we're not being forced to use. I don't mind GK myself, but the additional ammo drop is dumb.

I feel the same but there's too much ammo. The pickups are devalued.

I completely agree. There has always been a little too much ammo in Doom, but it seemed worse in nuDoom.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

So much gnashing of teeth over something that we're not being forced to use. I don't mind GK myself, but the additional ammo drop is dumb.

I feel the same but there's too much ammo. The pickups are devalued.

I completely agree. There has always been a little too much ammo in Doom, but it seemed worse in nuDoom.

It's actually alright in Nightmare and UNightmare until halfway through, when you can get the ammo rune. In UNightmare you really gotta know where every pickup is. I love that.

Game is actually harder in the first half. They acknowledged that after the first half it is not as good. I guess we'll see how they remedy this.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

GKs in DOOM are like pineapple on pizza.

So by that you mean that the sweetness of the pineapple contrasts perfectly with the salty pizza, further encahing something that was already delicious.

 

[JDR13]

So much gnashing of teeth over something that we're not being forced to use. I don't mind GK myself, but the additional ammo drop is dumb.

I feel the same but there's too much ammo. The pickups are devalued.

I completely agree. There has always been a little too much ammo in Doom, but it seemed worse in nuDoom.

It's actually alright in Nightmare and UNightmare until halfway through, when you can get the ammo rune. In UNightmare you really gotta know where every pickup is. I love that.

Game is actually harder in the first half. They acknowledged that after the first half it is not as good. I guess we'll see how they remedy this.

I skipped the rune challenges completely in my first (partial) playthrough. They seem out of place and immersion-breaking to me. I only play on Ultra-Violence though. I'm probably going to skip them again in the playthrough I'm about to start.

 

[AW8]

I SHIT ON ALL DOOM GAMES

FROM HIGH ABOVE

HEAVEN, THAT IS WHERE I RESIDE

HELL, THAT IS WHERE YOU BELONG

EAT MY SHIT

Spoiler

FAGGOTS

 

[OctavianRomulus]

I SHIT ON ALL DOOM GAMES

FROM HIGH ABOVE

HEAVEN, THAT IS WHERE I RESIDE

HELL, THAT IS WHERE YOU BELONG

EAT MY SHIT

Spoiler

FAGGOTS

If only you could talk to the demons.

 

[JDR13]

I SHIT ON ALL DOOM GAMES

FROM HIGH ABOVE

HEAVEN, THAT IS WHERE I RESIDE

HELL, THAT IS WHERE YOU BELONG

EAT MY SHIT

Spoiler

FAGGOTS

If only you could talk to the demons.

I'm pretty sure he has a demon hiding in his ass.

 

[Jenkem]

 

[passerby]

I don't share the same level of hatred for NuDoom as most people here, but the Glory Kill mechanic is something I could definitely do without. It's way too powerful to the point it remains a get out of jail card you can resort to when you fuck up even on Nightmare difficulty, and the implications it carries for encounter design are not to be underestimated.

I don't think there is a lot of people who outright hate nuDoom, rather are frustrated because it's a potentially excellent game, that would be a pretty decent reboot, if not for a bit of current year nuDesign shit smeared all over it. It reminds me a lot of nuDeusEx issues.

Fix nuDeusEx:
1) Don't stop time and make enemies go into full alert, when you perform awesome buttan takedown in front of their eyes, make enemy shout and alert nearby friends, if you initiate takedown from the front.
2) Make augs usage a limited resource for contextual opportunistic use, no regen at all, not even one point, but make a basic takedown free.
There is enough candy bars in the game, to easily use augs always when really needed and you could buy more, if you wanted be more frivolous, making them a money sink.

Fix nuDoom:
1) Let enemies attack while awesome buttan takedown is performed.
2) Make enemy drops independent from how they're killed and less than is required to kill them. If you are super low on health, or ammo enemy drops could be increased just enough to barely keep you going, if you stop being careless.
Make enemy drops from GKs just be added to your resources, instead of throwing rainbow pinata in your face, looks awful, or at least highlight them only after they hit the ground ( maybe there will be an option to disable all highlights in Eternal )

They could even leave the games, as they are for normies, just make higher difficulties work differently.

 

[JDR13]

Fix nuDoom:
1) Let enemies attack while awesome buttan takedown is performed.
2) Make enemy drops independent from how they're killed and less than is required to kill them.
If you are super low on health, or ammo enemy drops could be increased just enough to barely keep you going, if you stop being careless.
Make enemy pickup from GKs just be added to your resources instead of throwing rainbow pinata in your face, looks awful.

They could even leave the games, as they are for normies, just make higher difficulties work differently.

Also, get rid of the rune challenges. Imo, they're too gamey and immersion breaking. Keep the rune system, but hide the runes throughout the levels and have them well guarded.

 

[Durandal]

Fix nuDoom:
1) Let enemies attack while awesome buttan takedown is performed.
2) Make enemy drops independent from how they're killed and less than is required to kill them.
If you are super low on health, or ammo enemy drops could be increased just enough to barely keep you going, if you stop being careless.
Make enemy pickup from GKs just be added to your resources instead of throwing rainbow pinata in your face, looks awful.

They could even leave the games, as they are for normies, just make higher difficulties work differently.

Also, get rid of the rune challenges. Imo, they're too gamey and immersion breaking. Keep the rune system, but hide the runes throughout the levels and have them well guarded.

Eternal already does that by the looks of it. Now each time you find a rune station you can just pick one of nine runes you want, meaning you can get the mid-air control rune starting from level 2 instead of having to wait until halfway into the game.

 

[DalekFlay]

If they had you get attacked while doing a glory kill then every reviewer under the sun would have pointed that out as a major flaw and said it made them pointless. Not saying I agree with that, but at some point you have to accept that flaws are relative and they have to design these games for more than the Codex crowd.