DOOOM

>create minor adjustments to core gameplay with consideration to balance
>end up with the most innovative FPS of the past 10 years
>and the most unique gameplay experience compared to the previous year
Is there a lesson to be learned with DOOM Eternal?

Also, "Fuck balance" fags BTFO

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>Is there a lesson to be learned with DOOM Eternal?
shilling is not business

is big business
fuck im really sorry for the double post, Todd

based
krine

this

Reminder that the only people who dont like Eternal are Millenials who just want to mindlessly play games to "feel cool" and to "turn their brain off"

DOOM Eternal plays like a tightly designed character-action game similar to and as good as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, while (too successfully) masquerading as an FPS. And if you ask me, that is a good thing, but it does a relatively bad job of telling you this.

I just finished the game on Nightmare, the highest difficulty if you don't count the permadeath variation of that difficulty, and I went through phases with the game, trying to figure it and its systems out. After the Slayer Gate in the Cultist Base took over an hour from my life, I shut off the game for the night and intended to lower the difficulty the next day. When I forgot to do that the next morning I realised that the Slayer Gate taught me some valuable lessons about how this game works, and I kept it at Nightmare throughout. Apart from especially two encounters in the game and the final boss (where I had to learn a new lesson about resource management this late in the game), it was the most fun I've ever had with a singleplayer shooter in over 25 years of gaming. All the other Slayer Gates I finished within 1-3 tries because I 'got it'; I understood what the developers called the 'Fun Zone.'

Thing is, DOOM Eternal's "Guide to the Fun Zone" is explained to you in a way that is easy to misinterpret.

The game tries its best to ease you into its systems, but (at least in my experience) it falls a bit short of achieving that. The Anachrotron in particular is a very demanding first big enemy because it's very mobile, has a relatively small weak point hitbox and hits like a truck, and I think that throwing it this early at you is asking a bit too much since you are still likely to figure out the resource management in the game. Add to this the Cacodemon and the explicit instruction to throw a grenade in its mouth and the game, as a whole, gives off the wrong impression of how it is meant to be played.

These enemies and their weaknesses make it seem as if though there's always a right tool for the job, and a clear and correct path to deal with each enemy — Enemy A leads to Tool 1 leads to Technique I; Cacodemon leads to Grenade leads to Glory Kill. I had to learn, in playing the game, that that is not true. This Slayer Gate, reminiscent of Challenge Rooms in character-action games, taught me that DOOM Eternal has the same flow as those games, and the very same design principles, and thus should be approached in the same way:

Don't focus on one enemy or one combo/weapon, but switch it up, stay on the move, change priority targets dynamically as the situation changes and learn that it's sometimes better to play inefficiently to survive; that means to leave an enemy half-dead, to let a critical hit opportunity expire, or to waste rockets on fodder enemies (and with it their promise of resources). Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to be inefficient and to switch to a weapon that is too weak to kill (for easy Glory Kills and thus health) or too strong to allow for a Glory Kill to allow you to move on to the next enemy quickly. That is why the game reminds me of DmC or Bayonetta, especially at high difficulties — there is no one combo that you should rely on, because in those games, that will kill your style meter or you.
In DOOM Eternal, your resources are your 'combo meter,' and breaking it means that you die.

Its biggest issue (and the reason, I believe, why the opinion on this sub is mostly leaning towards negative or disappointment) is that the game hides those mechanical design principles under the veneer of an FPS like (most recently) Dusk. I played DOOM 2016 twice: Once on the PS4 using primarily one or two weapons, and once on the PC using every tool at my disposal. I was fine with the first playthrough, but the second one was leagues better.

You could feel that 2016 was designed to be played like the latter option, but allowed for the former, and you can tell that the developers want to push you away from one and towards the other. In my opinion, they are absolutely right to do so, but they also largely failed to show how inherently nuanced and strategic the game is.

The flow of this game is built on your ability to realise, on the spot, which resource you have and which you do not -- by that I mean health, armor, ammo, cooldown charges and, most importantly, time and opportunity. You do not want to Glory Kill every -- or even most -- enemies. You do not want to 'overkill' every or most enemies either. Yes, a grenade will make it easy to Glory Kill a Cacodemon, but it takes time for the enemy to be in that state, and that wait will put you in harm's way. A fully charged Ballista Shot will kill the enemy immediately, but it won't give you much health if any. So what's the solution? It's neither to always use the grenade, nor to always use the Ballista, but to know when to use what. You quickly have to learn that every enemy has weak points and is vulnerable to specific weapons, but if you stick with using the best tool every time you won‘t make it either because resources will run out (yes, a lock-on rocket will instantly kill whiplashes, but you won‘t be able to Glory Kill them if you need the health, for instance, so you better find another combination of damage sources that safely and quickly staggers them in case you need it).

Switching weapons often is the most important thing about the game, by far. The Marauder is the best example for this: very difficult if you stick with any one weapon, but if you bait his green flash, hit him Super Shotgun, quickly switch to the Ballista, quickly switch to the Super Shotgun again etc. you can hit him multiple times per stun, making it a breeze.

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I also changed my keybinds to something closely resembling the Quake Champions layout (1-4 for Heavy Rifle, Combat Shotgun, Plasma Rifle, Super Shotgun, Q for Rocket Launcher, E for Chaingun, R for Ballista, T for BFG, MB3 for Grenades, Mouse Wheel Up/Down for Equipment Switching, MB4 for Chainsaw, MB5 for Flame Thrower) and that helped so much — being able to quickly change weapons without breaking the flow of the game made everything fall into place. I never used the Weapon Wheel after relying on it up to and in the first Slayer Gates.

I unterstand why people feel like they're being 'forced' to play the game a certain way, and DOOM Eternal is much more tightly designed than 2016 in the sense that it strongly and obviously discourages certain styles of play. But I still believe that it is a major misconception to think that the game can only be played in one certain way; or, as I read in a comment on here, that it is like a brutal version of "Bop It," where every signal requires a specific reaction. The game works — I want to say 'only works,' and I think that's true at least of Nightmare — if you play it improvisationally and if you quickly get rid of the idea that there is only one right tool for the job. Every single one of the numerous tools in DOOM Eternal is the right tool, but it is on you as a player to know how to use them.

I loved it to pieces, I want to replay it again and again, and I want to have an arcade mode like in DOOM 2016 to make the similarities to character action games even more overt. But I hope, in particular, that people find the amazingly crafted joy that this game offers, rather than get turned off by struggling to play a game in a way that is different from how it wants you to play it.