How Come Heretic And Hexen Aren't As Popular As Doom?

[ENEMY!!!]

Heretic always came across to me as a technically competent medieval version of Doom but with less variety of environments and generally less fun to play.  Hexen came across as more interesting and immersive, but let down by the amounts of switch hunting and puzzles.

[Havoc Crow]

  On 5/10/2020 at 9:34 PM, Danzer said:

Because the term "First Person Shooter" didn't exist yet, so any fps game released on the 90s was called a doom clone.

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Akchually, I've done some quick Googling and found uses of the term "first-person shooter" dating as far back as 1993. So the term did exit back then, but apparently wasn't yet popular.

[Hisymak]

For me and my beginnings with Doom-engine games, it was exactly the opposite case.

As a small kid, the very first 3D game I got was Heretic. My dad somehow got both Heretic and Doom, but he preferred Heretic's magical theme over Doom. Therefore he got interested in Heretic and played it more, and showed it to me. I was really very impressed by the game, not only because it was the very first game of FPS genre I played, but I loved the environments, weapons monsters, music... It quite influenced my child imagination and fantasy.

Several years later I eventually got into Doom, it was a good game I liked (it very resembled me of Heretic), but, it did not leave so much strong impression in me that Heretic and Hexen did.

I really think having a medeival fantasy FPS game with vibrant colors and magical weapons is a good complement for dark Sci-Fi FPSs like Doom. I like playing both Doom and Heretic and alternating between them. Both games can give me a good experience, althrough the beggiest disadvantage of Heretic is worse monster variety and smaller selection of custom wads and stuff (and less custom original music in Heretic WADs).

[unerxai]

While I love Heretic, I think if they had put a little more effort into making it look less like a total conversion for Doom, it would be more respected. Right away you notice the menus are almost the same as Doom, most of the weapons feel like counterparts to Doom weapons, even some monsters.

 

It would've never been as popular as Doom anyway. Take Dark Forces for example. Unlike Heretic, more effort was put into making DF different from Doom, plus it's based on the most popular franchise of all time, yet it's still nowhere near as popular as Doom. Doom was just that revolutionary.

[Graf Zahl]

  On 5/14/2020 at 4:02 PM, unerxai said:

While I love Heretic, I think if they had put a little more effort into making it look less like a total conversion for Doom, it would be more respected. Right away you notice the menus are almost the same as Doom, most of the weapons feel like counterparts to Doom weapons, even some monsters.

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I think Heretic's biggest problem is not the weapons or the similarity to Doom but the lack of variety in the textures. Most levels look just garish with those colorful and endlessly repeating textures. This directly resulted in a profound lack of user made content of higher quality which is what kept Doom alive for this long. It was very late when the first interesting Heretic mods appeared but at that time the game has become more or less an obscurity.

 

 

  32 minutes ago, unerxai said:

It would've never been as popular as Doom anyway. Take Dark Forces for example. Unlike Heretic, more effort was put into making DF different from Doom, plus it's based on the most popular franchise of all time, yet it's still nowhere near as popular as Doom. Doom was just that revolutionary. 

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Ugh, Dark Forces. The game had a fatal design flaw, namely the lack of savegames. This immediately subtracted from its user base because one of the things that makes Doom so great is that you don't need long uninterrupted sessions, you can play a few minutes whenever you want.

 

But let's not forget the biggest reason why those later games never made a big impact: Duke Nukem 3D - which got released a mere 3 months after Hexen, meaning that Hexen's shelf life was precisely these 3 months. So Hexen never had a chance to build a modding community. When Duke3D appeared in 1996 it took FPS design to an entirely new level and this would normally also have been the end of Doom, hadn't id released the source code.

[A Nobody]

A shooter being colorful isn't a bad thing.

[CyberDreams]

  On 5/14/2020 at 4:44 PM, Graf Zahl said:

Ugh, Dark Forces. The game had a fatal design flaw, namely the lack of savegames. This immediately subtracted from its user base because one of the things that makes Doom so great is that you don't need long uninterrupted sessions, you can play a few minutes whenever you want.

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Yeah...that really does suck. I don't know why Lucas Arts (?) made that decision tbh. In a time where you could usually save an infinite number of times in FPS games they decided to add in a limited save system (or was it a checkpoint system?; it's been so long). I do love that game but i rarely play it due to a lack of a decent source port with full support :(

 

Also pretty much the rest of what you said is true. Duke 3D came out and the rest is history. The Doom engine was getting old by then. But a good game is a good game and now retro games are in so...people love 'em again haha!

 

Offtopic:

I also should play Heretic more but i'm not sure if i should play it with mouselook on or just how i normally play Doom (aka with it off). I know the game has auto-aim so technically you don't need to but there is a fly mode and i don't really know how that works tbh. I barely played Heretic/Hexen before but i do love the bright colors tbh. The soundtrack is AMAZING as well.

Edited May 15, 2020 by CyberDreams

[Murdoch]

I concur with most of the answers given. Fantasy as a whole is a relatively less popular genre. Heretic really kind of coasted on it's connection to Doom a little bit too much. It was competent enough but did not really do enough to distinguish itself. Hexen on the other hand did a lot more, but shot itself in the foot with excessively complicated switch hunt puzzles.

 

And really, Doom was lightning in a bottle. The exact right game, powered by the exact right tech at the exact right time. You are never going to reproduce that level of popularity by doing a riff on what was basically the same thing. How many games can you really say were not just crazy popular but either defined or started a genre, or really changed what that genre was? It would be a relatively short list compared to sheer volume of games released.

[A Nobody]

There's nothing wrong with puzzle solving.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

  On 5/15/2020 at 5:15 AM, The Strife Commando said:

There's nothing wrong with puzzle solving.

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When the puzzle is objectively repetitive, bad, or lack of proper clues to be solved, yes, it's wrong.

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[seed]

  On 5/15/2020 at 5:30 AM, TheNoob_Gamer said:

When the puzzle is objectively repetitive, bad, or lack of proper clues to be solved, yes, it's wrong.

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Ya, the problem with Hexen, for many people, was that it was too confusing since the game didn't offer nearly enough information about what happened sometimes. The messages telling the player a door or something opened on map X were okay, but these "a quarter of the puzzle has been solved" did nothing to help. Now the maps themselves really weren't that fucking bad, so I generally disagree with the notion that Hexen's puzzles were THAT hideous as some like to make them look wrt doing what you were supposed to be doing.

 

Hexen 2, on the other hand, now that game was indeed very obtuse. On the one hand it offered many more clues than Hexen did, but the maps themselves and the progression were just aggravating. The castle maps and the Wheel of Ages puzzle in the Egyptian hub come to mind, those were zero fun. And to make matters worse, combat received a downgrade from Hexen, and so did the enemy variety. Thought that Hexen had too many Slaughtars? Well, Hexen 2 had too many Archers, and guess what, Portal of Praevus reportedly introduced another Archer.

Edited May 15, 2020 by seed

[CyberDreams]

  On 5/15/2020 at 6:08 AM, seed said:

Thought that Hexen had too many Slaughtars? Well, Hexen had too many Archers, and guess what, Portal of Praevus reportedly introduced another Archer.

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You mean Hexen 2 had too many Archers right? I haven't played Hexen 2 but i've seen gameplay of it. It definitely looked a lot more "puzzly" than Hexen did. Also seemed to lack the action/combat that Hexen did as well. It looked pretty good though since it's on the Quake engine (i believe).

[seed]

  On 5/15/2020 at 6:42 AM, CyberDreams said:

You mean Hexen 2 had too many Archers right? I haven't played Hexen 2 but i've seen gameplay of it. It definitely looked a lot more "puzzly" than Hexen did. Also seemed to lack the action/combat that Hexen did as well. It looked pretty good though since it's on the Quake engine (i believe).

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Ya, typo.

 

It's a good game I daresay, but seriously flawed n some aspects. I think it runs on the Quake 2 engine though, not too sure.

[taufan99]

Coming from the guy who likes Tomb Raider Series' puzzles, I sure find Hexen's puzzles (or almost everything about it in general) confusing.

  On 5/15/2020 at 6:56 AM, seed said:

 

Ya, typo.

 

It's a good game I daresay, but seriously flawed n some aspects. I think it runs on the Quake 2 engine though, not too sure.

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It uses the first Quake engine. The one using Quake 2 engine is Heretic II, which is third-person action-adventure a la Tomb Raider.

[Murdoch]

  On 5/15/2020 at 5:15 AM, The Strife Commando said:

There's nothing wrong with puzzle solving.

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I agree. But Hexen did not have true puzzle solving. Wandering around trying to find switches is not a puzzle. A trained chimp could get that right sooner or later. Do not misunderstand me, I like the game. But aspects of the design definitely grated.

[Gez]

  On 5/15/2020 at 6:56 AM, seed said:

It's a good game I daresay, but seriously flawed n some aspects. I think it runs on the Quake 2 engine though, not too sure.

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IIRC, Quake engine for Hexen II; Quake II engine for Heretic II.

[Guest Unregistered account]

Both games added stuff that sounded really cool on paper or when you discuss them with a friend, but in practice and overall both games suffer from a lack of polish present in Doom, neither are as fun as Doom, and Hexen has really dumb design which is a shame when it brought so much to the engine and source ports. As others have said, hunting multiple maps for a switch isn't thought-provoking, challenging or fun, it's just... stupid. After a while of switch hunting you may as well go back to any other game, especially since the combat tends to be a drag once you finally get past it. The hordes of centaurs/slaughters in the tombs are a great example, just bad design. Nothing actually challenging about waiting for an enemy to stop being invincible, can be novel in one-off occasions but then the mapmakers filled the hallways in those maps to the brim with them. Tedious, especially if you're the Mage

[Can't play on Nightmare]

  On 5/10/2020 at 6:20 AM, dmdr said:

because they're not as fun

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Heretic is a fantastic game. I dont agree with you.

 

Most of the people have never even heard of Heretic.

 

As for Hexen, it is not as good as Heretic. 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Can't play on Nightmare

[fraggle]

1. Doom came first. Others have covered this way better than I could.

2. Heretic/Hexen just aren't are fun as Doom. Heretic is a less artistically coherent game than Doom and Hexen's focus on puzzles is probably a turn-off to a lot of people.

3. I suspect something about the fantasy setting made them less appealing to the general public. Even today we see that FPSes are dominated by military themes. I think a lot of people would just much rather shoot a gun than zap a wand. Maybe it's a macho power-trip thing.

[GarrettChan]

I personally won't categorize Hexen as the same type of Doom. Probably it's closer to Eternal Doom, maybe.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

NVM, after I look at who posted this.

 

[whirledtsar]

  On 5/15/2020 at 6:08 AM, seed said:

 

Ya, the problem with Hexen, for many people, was that it was too confusing since the game didn't offer nearly enough information about what happened sometimes. The messages telling the player a door or something opened on map X were okay, but these "a quarter of the puzzle has been solved" did nothing to help. Now the maps themselves really weren't that fucking bad, so I generally disagree with the notion that Hexen's puzzles were THAT hideous as some like to make them look wrt doing what you were supposed to be doing.

 

Hexen 2, on the other hand, now that game was indeed very obtuse. On the one hand it offered many more clues than Hexen did, but the maps themselves and the progression were just aggravating. The castle maps and the Wheel of Ages puzzle in the Egyptian hub come to mind, those were zero fun. And to make matters worse, combat received a downgrade from Hexen, and so did the enemy variety. Thought that Hexen had too many Slaughtars? Well, Hexen 2 had too many Archers, and guess what, Portal of Praevus reportedly introduced another Archer.

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The expansion just replaces the Archer with an ice reskin. You might actually enjoy it better because the puzzles are simpler and there's an "objectives" feature in case you forget what you're supposed to be doing.

[Chip]

they both did not get sequels every few years and there was no hype to those sequels.

DOOM and Wolfenstein both had games released in the early 2000s then they had sequels years to come. they both also started the FPS genre. 

Duke Nukem was unlike anything, and sort of showed off the true power of an FPS.

But in a way, Heretic and Hexen were sort of like been there done that sort of games. their themes and monsters were new (along with a lot of other things) but they just weren't DOOM and Wolfenstein. 

When I first got into the FPS genre (late 2017) I had already heard of DOOM, Wolfenstein, and Duke Nukem. Heretic and Hexen I never knew existed until a year ago. 

I also think that Heretic was released directly after DOOM, so people were still playing DOOM, while Heretic was left there, and nobody noticed it. 

[magicsofa]

1. Heretic

I love Heretic. People have mentioned texture count, but I want to remind them that doom has a significant section of textures that are just washed out green panels, washed out brown panels, or washed out gray panels. And they work excellently in that context. But, Heretic has a much more poppin' palette. Sometimes I want that colorful fantasy environment. The weapons are not the best, but the tome of power saves the day. The gargoyles are annoying at first, but then you blow up a whole cloud of them with one phoenix staff shot and their annoyance seems forgivable. E4 and E5 are hard, because you have to git gud, scrub. They are expansion episodes so I think the difficulty spike is acceptable. I do remember spending some time leading monsters to the crusher in E4M1 which was, to me, the most tedious part of the game.

 

2. Hexen

I love Hexen. The classes are okay, the monsters are badass, and as long as you are not too proud to look up a walkthrough, the puzzles are bearable. I think Hexen maps are more realistic and immersive than Doom or Heretic, in part due to the textures, but also the decorations and sounds just give it a great atmosphere. The bosses are actually pretty cool, and more fun than Doom's bosses. There's no BFG to rip them to shreds in two shots, and that's a good thing. Heresiarch maybe has a little too much health but in general, Hexen combat was definitely slower, probably a big let-down for Doom worshippers. Add that in with puzzles and...yeah, it's slower.

3. Strife

I love Strife. Flawed, definitely, but it really shines with exploration, dialogue, and sometimes good combat. I actually liked the weapons which all seemed to have an application somewhere. Unlike Doom, where you can literally just use whatever weapon you last picked up until the ammo is out, for the entire game, forever, Strife gives you situations where picking the right weapon is major. Again, it's a slower game. I don't exactly remember the accuracy thing, but I do remember my stabby knife becoming so powerful that I could use it on pretty much anything. I also remember being able to summon rebel fighters, and having incendiary grenades. Awesome. I don't recall having any problems with health kits or ammo. Couldn't you buy all that stuff from stores?


In conclusion, these games are all pretty fun for the right player. Lots of people are comparing them to Doom as if being different from Doom is a bad thing. If they had made them too much like Doom, I'd be asking "why pay for a "new" game when I could just play another Doom wad?" I'd bet Strife is especially unknown because it was released while everyone was drooling over Quake. But, more importantly, what is it that all of these games are missing?

Multiplayer. Yes, they support it, but it's not good. Multiplayer sucks ass in all three of these games. Maybe there could be some good Deathmatch, but nobody made maps for it. The developers probably should have included some DM specific maps, because otherwise, there are almost no viable maps to DM on. And forget all about Co-op, which breaks even in Heretic (it shouldn't, but it does, because of mapper oversight). All three games are good in their own right, and the differences in terms of gameplay and aesthetics are probably not what earned them a lower spot than the original Doom. Some people like the slower gameplay and fantasy/realistic settings more than Doom. However, without multiplayer, you miss out on a lot of replayability. These games were much more focused on the single-player campaign experience, especially Hexen and Strife, and since multiplayer support was already built in to the engine, they had to throw in those flagged items but didn't go much further than that.

Edited May 27, 2020 by magicsofa

[Aaron Blain]

Hitscans.

 

Doom's gameplay is fundamentally more sophisticated and dynamic than Heretic. In Doom, the weakest enemies have the most effective control of space. There's a constant interplay between line-of-fire management and projectile dodging. Heretic is just first-person Robotron, which is fine, but it's a lesser game.

 

I say this as someone who has played Heretic and Hexen to death, and considers Curse of D'sparil one of the finest gaming experiences of my life. But Doom is a better game.

 

A lesser problem is that the enemies are too tough on average, which causes fights to evolve more slowly. This is one of the main reasons ROTT, to me, feels sort of weird and unsatisfying. bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangUGH!

Edited May 28, 2020 by Aaron Blain

[dr_st]

  On 5/28/2020 at 4:34 PM, Aaron Blain said:

Hitscans

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This is really an interesting point that explains a lot but isn't immediately obvious. Congratulations. :)

[whirledtsar]

  On 5/27/2020 at 1:36 PM, magicsofa said:

Multiplayer. Yes, they support it, but it's not good. Multiplayer sucks ass in all three of these games. Maybe there could be some good Deathmatch, but nobody made maps for it. The developers probably should have included some DM specific maps, because otherwise, there are almost no viable maps to DM on. And forget all about Co-op, which breaks even in Heretic (it shouldn't, but it does, because of mapper oversight). All three games are good in their own right, and the differences in terms of gameplay and aesthetics are probably not what earned them a lower spot than the original Doom. Some people like the slower gameplay and fantasy/realistic settings more than Doom. However, without multiplayer, you miss out on a lot of replayability. These games were much more focused on the single-player campaign experience, especially Hexen and Strife, and since multiplayer support was already built in to the engine, they had to throw in those flagged items but didn't go much further than that.

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Heretic included 3 DM-specific maps.

[Gokuma]

I think the only good one of those three maps is the conversion of idmap01 and people are otherwise better off playing the standard episodes in deathmatch.   Still better than the GBA Doom DM maps though.

 

Editing for the Heretic, damn the texture set while decent looking, is horribly tiny and limited.   That game sorely needs more textures and the Tome of Power effects are about the only thing keeping the weapons from being the Doom ones just reskinned.   Good game, just those were some flaws and reasons it wasn't edited as much.   I remember the biggest obstacle in editing in Hexen way back when it was newer, was editor support being way behind Dooms, so even with good reference materials it was much less accessible.   Just the switch hunting was overdone, the first hub was too tiresome with too many portals, and it could have used more mid-tier enemies.   Recently editing for the Hexen mapset Realms of Cronos was great with a huge texture pack to work with.   Also after all these years with better editors, I was surprised to see the amount of Hexen stuff hadn't overtaken Heretic on idgames.   It may be catching up though.

[Hisymak]

  On 5/28/2020 at 11:59 PM, Gokuma said:

Editing for the Heretic, damn the texture set while decent looking, is horribly tiny and limited.

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I see lot of people are complaining of this. I agree that this is generally a problem and a significant flaw of Heretic, but as a side note, paradoxically, this makes mapping for Heretic a lot easier for me. I personally have quite weak imagination, and when I wanted to begin with mapping and create my first map, making a Heretic map was a choice for me. Not only because I'm more familiar with Heretic's fantasy theme, but it's quite difficult for me to choose from lot of available textures, in Heretic it was not a big problem, and my map still looked good without thinking much about texture choice. (Note that I ever released only one Heretic map in my life and no Doom one at all).

[Can't play on Nightmare]

Heretic didnt have a Nightmare difficulty. Doom did.

 

Heretic's 5th difficulty is far easier than Doom's 5th difficulty.

 

However, I want to make Heretic's 5th difficulty harder but not as hard as Doom's Nightmare. In between.

 

Suggestion?

Edited May 29, 2020 by Can't play on Nightmare

[TheNoob_Gamer]

  On 5/29/2020 at 11:33 AM, Can't play on Nightmare said:

However, I want to make Heretic's 5th difficulty harder but not as hard as Doom's Nightmare. In between.

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Remove the additional 50% ammunition pickups and you get the Doom UV-fast experience.

Edited May 29, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer