Would you play Doom 1 and 2 if community content had never existed?

[Maes]

All things considered, even after mods were a thing, the original id levels held their own and aged quite well. Even today, by replaying them, there's always some detail or nuance to appreciate, and never do you feel that the engine is severely underutilized or that they are just placeholders to "pitch" the engine technology itself. Which is even more impressive considering the editors that id had to work with.

 

That's to be expected, especially for Doom 1 levels, since Doom hadn't established itself yet, so they couldn't fuck that one up, esp. E1. If those were bad, they wouldn't sell many registered copies of Doom now, would they? They admittedly let themselves go a bit starting with Doom II (complacency?). Final Doom and, IMO, E4 of Ultimate Doom are a bit of a special case. Technically they may look better/more intricate, but they lack something -a story to hold them together perhaps, a theme, an atmosphere? Some levels are certainly memorable individually, but, at least to me, they don't constitute a complete game experience when taken as a whole.

 

The console ports OTOH, with their simplified layouts tend to look more like early 1994 mods, which clearly weren't at the same level as the original id maps. Those feel more like playing a glorified Wolfenstein 3D or something that vaguely resembled Doom -wouldn't want to go back to that even with mods. Again, the N64 port is a special case -but in a good way this time.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Maes

[Final Verdict]

I would still be playing it as I played Doom 1 & 2 for some time (32x, Playstation, then Pc) before I had a Pc and access to the internet for Wads.

 

Without the community content I would only revisit it every now and then. I would still play it though because it's one of my favourite games of all time. If I had to measure it then without the free content I would probably come back to Doom once every year or two.

 

I grew up with Doom and it covered me during some rough patch's in my teens. Obviously in my case there is a strong nostalgic magnetism in play so I'll always come back to it, regardless of user created content.

 

That said, the free Wads and maps definitely helps to keep things fresh so that Doom has a permanent fixture on my desktop. 

 

[Spec]

I'd probably still play. I already play the Iwads more than pwads anyway.

[yakfak]

I would be sitting on a Morrowind fan forum complaining that no-one played my mod which gave all the Guars dialogue

[ReaperAA]

While I used to play vanilla Doom in my childhood during the early 2000s (original maps only because I didn't knew about custom content at that point), I returned to Doom at around 2014-15 mostly because I was amazed by the custom stuff made for the game. If the custom content didn't exist, I probably would not have returned.

[lokbustam257]

yeah, i would replay Nirvana to death if idgames archive doesn't exist

[URROVA]

I wold play Doom1 and 2, but not so much as i do now.

I wold play and beat it and later dont play it again.

Because i dont play the main game but the mods (i dont play deathmatch/coop because my internet connection is shit).

Also if community content have never existed, i will not make a mod for it because i will not know what i can do with the game xD

[roadworx]

1 hour ago, yakfak said:

I would be sitting on a Morrowind fan forum complaining that no-one played my mod which gave all the Guars dialogue

is that something you actually made

[yakfak]

14 minutes ago, roadworx said:

is that something you actually made

haha no
i was into morrowind mod making but doom stuff's just less fiddly and you don't need to think about abstractions like levels and attributes and stuff, so the guar dialogue joke was something I'd've made if not distracted by an easier-to-mod game

[Doritos420]

For sure. I started playing Doom years ago and feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what the community has put out. Prior to playing mods/fan wads I would play it about once per year.

 

Even the base games has hours of entertainment and ways to increase the difficulty, especially if you start doing pistol start runs, saveless, speedruns, pacifist, nightmare playthroughs...etc.

[rzh]

Probably yeah, to finish all of the IWADS on UV-Max with pistolstart and then move on to other games.

[Pierrot]

Certainly yes. I've played Doom on SNES and PSX for almost 10 years before knowing about the community.

 

I have kept all of my old console games from my childhood and there is a bunch I play again from time to time. Doom is definitely one of the games I've replayed the most.

[Reisal]

Maybe, it would be difficult to maintain a strong interest in the long run. Drop in occasionally to play an episode or two, then exit for a while.

[_bruce_]

Absolutely - I dig the original maps in conjunction with legacy hardware the most.

 

[Oldschoolgeek32]

if community content had never existed, I'd probably still play DOOM 1 and 2 since the base games are pretty neat and it's fun to go back too as part of the history and legacy of FPS games, but I would probably not play it as much as I do today. That's why I really appreciate and I am really thankful that we live in a world full of passionate players, modders, and mappers creating custom content, mods, and other cool stuff :)

[Mayomancer]

Considering my first Doom game was Final Doom for the PSX, probably not. Maybe i would have still gotten Doom 3 later on, but the main reason i got that in the first place was because of the playstation game so i'd probably only discover the original games much later on in life if at all. It was a relatively large part of my early life though so maybe my interests today would be completely different, who knows.

[BlurMarsh]

Most likely, yeah. Even though lots of community stuff outshines the original levels I think Doom 1 and 2 are still pretty solid games, specially Doom 1 which I can just kinda beat in 2 hours after playing it so much.

 

I probably wouldn't have engaged with the community as much though, definitely the most fun part of meeting other fans has been learning how to make maps from them and discovering very cool fanmade levels through them.

[Ofisil]

My thoughts on the matter for those who don't mind some reading (yeah, shameless self-promotion, I know)

 

http://www.cubed3.com/review/2823/1/doom-1993-pc.html

 

Short answer: I'll never stop playing The Ultimate Doom.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Ofisil

[LudicrousFPS]

Personally, I would've tried to beat both The Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 on UV, and then I'd be done. The limitless community content is a major reason the community is thriving, and without that community, there just isn't that much.

[LouigiVerona]

I wouldn't play Doom as much as I do if it wasn't for the Oblige project. Computer-generated levels, which Oblige is capable of, completely reinvented Doom for me. I sometimes play the original levels (Doom 2, mostly). I do also sometimes check out community mods. But 99% of my play are Oblige levels.

[Hitboi]

Probably yes, but I would only complete it a few times.

[_bruce_]

16 hours ago, Ofisil said:

My thoughts on the matter for those who don't mind some reading (yeah, shameless self-promotion, I know)

 

http://www.cubed3.com/review/2823/1/doom-1993-pc.html

 

Short answer: I'll never stop playing The Ultimate Doom.

 

 

Great review but maybe swap the screenshots for some "pixel perfect" ones - or does the site scale/interpolate them?

[Gez]

23 hours ago, yakfak said:

I would be sitting on a Morrowind fan forum complaining that no-one played my mod which gave all the Guars dialogue

I'm pretty sure a guar dialogue mod would be File of the Month on Morrowind Nexus.

[Sotenga]

Honestly, I would. Certainly, I can name at least ten megawads that I'd rather play over Doom II, but... what can I say, I'm a nostalgic fool and I would still play Doom and Doom II every now and again just for the heck of it. Sometimes, you just want a glass of lemonade instead of some twenty-juice cocktail, you know?

[Snarboo]

Given the large number of FPS games I regularly replay that have virtually zero user made content (Eradicator, Radix, Powerslave, Kingpin, etc), I'd say yes! That said, I can't imagine a universe where Doom (or a game like it) wouldn't have user made content. The allure of creating your own 3D levels in a blazing fast 3D game is simply too strong, as attested by the fact that the first Doom level was hacked together in a hex editor. Secondly, the number of people in this thread that only found out that Doom had user made content years after the fact tells me that people play Doom regardless of mods.

 

It is feasible that there may have been another timeline where some other 3D/2.5D game stole the show, in which case we may not be posting on Doomworld, but rather Descentworld or Dukeworld. :p

[Pechudin]

I would probably never encounter DooM if they did not exist. The reason I got into DooM was TB's video on Brutal DooM.