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

[soulburner]

If it makes me want to come back to it and continue - yes :D

 

[DalekFlay]

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]

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.

 

[Niklasgunner]

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.

Djent isn't real metal.

Did I say that?
Its industrial and djent.
Regardless, it fits the gameplay much better than some neckbeards powerwolf playlist.

 

[Biscotti]

Doom Eternal looks fun, fuck it I don't care.
NuDoom is quite far removed from the spirit of Doom, but I never took offense to that. Just cannot be assed to when these new games have had absolutely zero impact on the classic Doom community which is still carrying the torch and showing no signs of slowing down. If I want Classic Doom there's still great content being churned out on a regular basis, and I don't care about a new coat of paint either, the classics are truly timeless to me anyway.

Just my two cents in this debate about NuDoom being some horrible affront to Doom's legacy.

 

[Morgoth]

It's not that nuDoom is an affront to the Doom legacy, it's just that it is shit on it's own (arena) grounds.

 

[Biscotti]

It's overrated as hell, but I found it to be quite alright.

 

[visions]

Why do you people call Doom a boomer game? P. sure most boomers were too old to be interested in Doom by 1993. Doom is gen x.

Carmack, being born in 1970 is clearly gen x. Romero is older by a few years (born in 1967) but if gen x starts at 1965, he's still gen x.

As for the players, p. sure more millenials played Doom in the 1990's than boomers did (bearing in mind that most if not all people born in the 80's are millenials).

 

[Biscotti]

Because of the 30 yo boomer meme, get with the times gramps.

 

[sullynathan]

Ok boomah

 

[DalekFlay]

Doom 3 was console garbage.

Whatever you might think of the game, this is a retarded statement.

 

[Lyric Suite]

30 yer old boomer is the best boomer:

 

[sullynathan]

Ok Zoomah

 

[Durandal]

Actually acknowledging some of the faults of nuDoom and how throwing in new shit in Eternal didn't magically improve it

 

[Efe]

no time stamps for those??
its 55 minutes

 

[Niklasgunner]

mainly 5-20 minutes, I typed out some of the more relevant parts

It was really boring. But nobody really said that or acknowledged it. I remember telling Marty "nobody is playing the game, and I don't want to play the game, and you don't want to play the game"
Meathook, dash, every ability we gave to the player completely broke the game, in that, nothing could touch you. You could just meathook around and dash, the AI just looked slow. The racecar got faster but the track stayed the same size. It just made it too easy. So we had to make the racetrack, the chessboard a bit more sophisticated, a bit more agressive, a little bit more challenging to keep up with the racecar we had build. [...] The truth is when we showed it at quakecon, that was me playing [...] It was all a lie. I was playing in a way that meant to make it look cool and I was weapon switching and all these things, but the whole time I was like "The game needs to make you play this way". [...] But the way I really needed to play was to just walk up to everybody and point blank them with a double barrel shotgun.

There were some shortcomings with DOOM 2016 when we are being honest with ourselves [...] Even that Polygon footage, the thing is thats just a player playing the game. If that footage doesn't look great whose fault is that? Is that their fault or our fault? How come that that person was able to succeed playing that way, like with one gun and missing 80% of the time? The game should have killed that person. What we kinda noticed was that, if you were a skilled FPS player and you picked up DOOM 2016, you naturally fell into what we call the fun zone. You would be weapon switching, moving, glory killing and managing resources and doing all these things and it feels good. If you were not that good at FPS, there were too many unplanned for exploits [...] for example super shotgun, that was kinda the solution to everything. [...] So we really went through to shore that up, to hold the player accountable, to not let them out of the funzone. The fun zone is managing resources, its doing all these different things, thinking constantly, its using the right tools for the job, diving into progression, what you will see: shooting weakpoints, all these different things. And when they don't play that way, we kill them, pretty much

 

[sullynathan]

This game will be great. There's no denying it.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm denying it.

 

[RoSoDude]

Actually acknowledging some of the faults of nuDoom and how throwing in new shit in Eternal didn't magically improve it

I've been on the "Doom 4 had boring level/encounter design and this is the fundamental problem" train for a long while, largely in response to the sentiment I saw online that it was a faithful revival of the old-school principles underylying the original games. That said, I did acknowledge there was some potential in the new formula -- the mobile imps, shield-bearing shotgun guys, bull rush Pinkies, and aggressive groundslamming Hellknights showed some promise in crafting more mechanically intricate combat, while the Mancubus, Revenant, and Cacodemon were all worthless husks of their former selves that felt stitched in without much thought to their adaption. I thought your previous critiques on the glory kill system and other aspects did a great deal to establish how the game failed to make much of its new style of gameplay, despite whatever good intentions they may have had.

However, this interview has practically sold me on the sequel. He straight up admits that Doom 4 completely failed to punish boring playstyles and it was simply too easy to succeed doing fuck all. He even says the 2018 QuakeCon demo was a farce, and the game didn't push you to play in the way he was showing at all. Now he says they've reworked the enemies so they pose a threat and require you to actually set them up for combos and use the appropriate tools. "We want to give you something to master, because the power fantasy that is earned is far more satisfying than the one that is just handed to you." Mad respect.

I still have a healthy dose of skepticism, because I was one of the guys who thought Doom 4 was boring and repetitive despite playing in the optimal way he described with constant weapon switching and threat prioritization, so it's still possible that what they've created for the sequel won't be enough for me. But the genuine manner in which he's approached internal and external criticism with honesty and self-reflection at least tells me that the team knows where the goal posts are.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

There's a bit from the interview where he reveals that apparentely enemy design has been a bigger concern this time around:

The Mancubus, for example. The last time, you could just walk rigth up to him with the super shotgun and shoot him in his chest to kill him. And while there were alot of cool different ways to kill, you didn't have to do any of those because the safest way as to simply use the super shotgun at close range. This time around, if you get close to him he'll quickly pound the ground with a AoE blast. We really polished the chess pieces. So what's his role, how do we define him? He's a Abrams tank. You can't just fucking walk up to an Abrams tank. Also when a tank trains his cannon on you, you should be nervous. So you don't wanna get into a toe-to-toe figth with the mancubus. You want use your agility, your long range weapon, you wanna stun him to try and create openings, which then you can take advantage of to hit him with your super shotgun or other powerful attacks.

 

[Jezal_k23]

So they are aware of several of Doom 2016's flaws, acknowledged them, and told us how they were addressed. This is actually very encouraging. I like how he admitted the way he played Eternal in 2018 was a lie and they had to rebalance the game to fix it.

 

[Morgoth]

Are they also gonna "fix" the level design?

 

[OctavianRomulus]

Are they also gonna "fix" the level design?

What exactly do you mean by Level Design? Do you mean the exploratory part or the arena combat? They mentioned one of their objectives was to make the combat between arenas more interesting and to make the arenas more open and less obvious. I think there is nothing wrong with arena style gameplay unless you abuse them like Doom 2016 did.

As for the exploratory part, I think the first half of the game did it really well, especially in the Resource Operations, Foundry and Argent Facility levels. Vast, open spaces with lots of goodies to find. If you are playing in Ultra Nightmare, it is vital to know where each pickup is. You even have secrets that require keys to access, which is very classic Doom. The Plasma Gun secret in the second level is my favorite Doom secret in all games.

I mentioned this was the case for the first half because the exploration gets simpler as the game progresses instead of more complex. I have thought about this a lot and I think I know why. It comes down to the glory kills. If you can get your health and ammo back from glory kills, then there is no reason to put ammo in secrets anymore. This means that secrets are going to be mostly comprised of weapons, upgrades, armor and powerups, later levels having only the last two because there are only so many upgrades you can have. This means you can't balance the game around hiding ammo anymore.

I have a love-hate relationship with the glory kills because if you think about it, it's basically a cleverly disguised regenerating health system (at least after the first half of the game). On one hand they are fun and really well animated but on the other hand it kind of removes the consequence of doing stupid shit and missing rockets, at least later on in the game. However, I think they are vital for a different reason and that is the fact that enemies are no longer slow or stationary on pillars like in the original Doom (with exceptions of course). They are fast, agile, can jump up walls and pillars and even a simple imp can ruin your day if you are not careful. It's very easy to be overwhelmed and get lost in all that chaos and a split second of invincibility can help you make life and death decisions. I just think the GKs need to be balanced differently. One option would be to make demons give health and zombies give ammo. By default, you can only get 5 health per kill, unless you get an Argent Cell pickup (which replaces the medkit), which gives you back 25% of your health when you perform a GK. This way, pickups would be more meaningful in non ulltra-nightmare situations and therefore would be valuable enough to be put in secrets, which in turn would make the Level Design more interesting later on. I think the player should always have a fighting chance so perhaps you could get a "free" cell per fight and perhaps two or three if you find rare upgrades. Basically a health version of the Chainsaw.

 

[Durandal]

Recently I've been rethinking Glory Kills and their role in the game. In UV, you're implicitly taught you can just spam them wherever for free health, invincibility, not having to waste ammo on an enemy, and extra mobility if you have runes on. In Nightmare, spamming Glory Kills tends to get you killed right right after (or as a friend of mine alleges--during) for pitiful rewards of like +5 HP (when you're on full health), because while doing a GK you also become blind to your surroundings and can easily get hit from behind right after you exit a GK. So you have to be more wary of your surroundings to see when it's safe to do a GK, or make it safe by stunning other nearby enemies before doing a GK on the weakened one. The risk/reward relation here isn't just being in close proximity to enemies to get health, it's committing yourself to being stationary for a moment and being blind to your surroundings to get some extra health.

The problem is that because doing a GK prevents enemies from doing new attacks, we're taught it's a 'safe' move. So when we do end up dying after doing one because of an enemy we can't even see, it feels like we've been swindled. But if other enemies could easily kill you during GKs, we'd come to see it as a risky unsafe move which makes the ensuing rewards all the more satisfying. Only +5HP isn't really worth it in a game where a single attack can reduce 50HP, so the average health yield of GKs would have to be screwed up, or reward the player with other bonuses like the speed boost on GK rune, or what Eternal is doing by having GKs charge a powerful melee strike. Doing GKs temporarily takes away control, but this isn't inherently a bad thing. Think of it like swinging your weapon in Dark Souls. You can't cancel your attacks and have to commit to each strike, so the onus lies on being able to tell not just when you can safely get a hit in, but also if you can recover in time to avoid any follow-up attacks from the enemy. But this risk/reward relationship gets again skewed with runes that speed up Glory Kills and thus reduce the risk involved.

 

[Tito Anic]

It will be shit! Goymers will love it!