The current state of the multiplayer community?

[Muusi]

Back in 2008 to like 2010 i used to be quite active on Skulltag and even joined a clan called GBTW and i really, really enjoyed deathmatch and the kickass dueling mode. A lot of great memories from Greenwar Map 20.

 

What's the current state of multiplayer? Are there still people playing or is it all bots? @Doomkid had a nice and easy guide on his YouTube channel so it's not a problem getting back into it but are there players on there if i use all available multiplayer ports?

[Arrowhead]

Its not all bots. Not too many players, but you can still easily get into an FFA in zandronum. There is usually at least one FFA lobby running. Its still quite fun actually, I've really enjoyed getting back into DM in the last couple years. So yeah, not dead - but certainly not a super vibrant scene right now...

[Doomkid]

I find my "once every week or two" FFAs on ZDaemon usually, but I do see them on Zand as well!

 

With Doom Explorer, I have a filter set that only allows servers using the Doom/Heretic/Hexen/FreeDoom IWADs to be shown (totally blocks out MegaGame, in other words).

 

With the filter set, the numbers are usually around 120 people at peak on the weekends, 40-50 during the weekdays at decent hours, and 20ish on weekdays on the low hours where most of the western world is asleep.

 

Unfortunately, of those numbers, only about 20% tend to be deathmatches and duels. In other words, you can find them, they're not rare by any means, but there are times where none are going / you'll have to use the MDF discord or something to ask people to join servers.

 

Hope this clarifies things, and it's a total shame what a backseat DM has taken more and more over the least 15 years..

[adamastor]

Would it be possible to try and organize a kind of DM/ FFA/ CTF matches, in Zandro, for example, here on Doomworld?

 

@Doomkid here could be one of the hosts, as he's a DM fanatic, and we'd pick a PWAD to do the matches on for the duration of a couple of weeks, or a month, sort of like the DWMegawad Club does with their playthroughs.

 

Even if it didn't have many members, it would be open on Doomworld, which is populated by a large number of Doomkind.

[DOEL]

As far as Zandronum, there are people playing all the time. It can get packed on the weekends. [TSPG] offers free hosting. I keep 3 servers running myself, usually vanilla co-op with custom WADs but sometimes with various mods.

 

I haven't spent much time with Odamex or ZDaemon so I can't really comment on those.

[Hypnotik]

There are plenty of people playing. There's a bunch of Doom-related Discords. And If I'm not mistaken you can still link up with other Doomers on IRC. But for example: Theres a organization that has a discord, "USQC" (not to be an advertisement.) they have doom events going pretty much 3-5 times a week. There's plenty of players its just you have to search around. Also depends on the time too. Zdaemon. Zandronum. Odamex. Crispy. Chocolate. I'm always see greenwar on zand. Hope to see you around in a game sometime.

[forgettable pyromaniac]

As for stuff like co-OP, I can sometimes get my sister to play it via Pr-Boom+ using LAN. If you have a friend or someone else that play doom you could always do it like that.

[Muusi]

Followed Dookid's guide and got everything setup. Just played ZDaemon for the first time in more than 10 years and oh my god how satisfying it is to mow other players down with the SSG.

 

Someone with more clout than me needs to set up a proper deathmatch event so i can properly get my ass kicked by Doomworld users 😆

Edited June 4, 2021 by Muusi

[Decay]

Most Doomworld users are not PVP players. They mostly come from the 3 main port communities, and most have histories rooted either in zdaemon or zandronum/skulltag. Hang around the MDF discord, or  the US Quake Community discord and you'll find games, stay on top of the events posted here etc

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Whenever I have time, I look for a coop game in Odamex, the same goes for deathmatch, in fact, a couple of weeks ago I had a deathmatch with three more people in Romero's server for Odamex, it was fun...

Little edit: in case you're interested, I usually play (or try to play) on Saturdays at 13:00 PM, note that I live in Mexico, so you may have to convert the time (I don't know how to do it)

4 hours ago, forgettablepyromaniac said:

As for stuff like co-OP, I can sometimes get my sister to play it via Pr-Boom+ using LAN. If you have a friend or someone else that play doom you could always do it like that.

Wait, you can set a LAN game in Prboom+? How do I do that?

Edited June 4, 2021 by Lol 6

[forgettable pyromaniac]

10 hours ago, Lol 6 said:

Whenever I have time, I look for a coop game in Odamex, the same goes for deathmatch, in fact, a couple of weeks ago I had a deathmatch with three more people in Romero's server for Odamex, it was fun...

Little edit: in case you're interested, I usually play (or try to play) on Saturdays at 13:00 PM, note that I live in Mexico, so you may have to convert the time (I don't know how to do it)

Wait, you can set a LAN game in Prboom+? How do I do that?

It's a .exe you run from command line.

 

Edit: More info here, also the .exe should come with prboom itself.

Edited June 5, 2021 by forgettablepyromaniac

[spwnSH4Rk]

Discord is a good way to alert people on doom related servers that you're going to deathmatch. I play every day and don't even have to wait really after pinging a server channel to let them know Im going in. 

[Somniac]

I like to play invasion matches on Zandronum as that was my jam back in the day on Skulltag. I was in a great game of Zdoom Wars the other day too. Occasionally coop servers come up on there, but a lot of them are survival with mods like Complex LCA (which I like for invasion but not really anything else), I need to check out ZDaemon and Odamex for some more standard co-op and DM. 

[princetontiger]

The ZDaemon community is a former shell of itself... It peaked around 2004-2008, and boy was it incredible. ZDCTF was my jam for many, many school nights. I see only 15-25 people online during offpeak times...

 

The action has moved to Zandronum, but round 2015-2016, everyone seemed to be playing the survival zombie wad and I lost interest... haven't beeen on in 4 years now. LCA and Complex mods are way school and expand the 'old school' feel that ZDaemon provides. If I recall, Zandro had about 70-90 players online around 2018. It could be more or less or the same today.

 

I've never seen anyone play Odamex, ever. The player list is always zero whenever I've checked the site player count.

Edited June 18, 2021 by princetontiger

[Ralphis]

4 hours ago, princetontiger said:

I've never seen anyone play Odamex, ever. The player list is always zero whenever I've checked the site player count.

 

People are on Odamex every single day! Typically coop/survival servers, but most people can easily get a duel by sitting in a server for a few minutes. The top CTF players, some of which are from the "ZDaemon Peak" of the mid-00s, also play on Odamex in the World Doom League. Most games are organized on the Odamex Discord.

 

Odamex has played host to almost all of the high profile multiplayer events over the past two years including Decino's 40k subscriber special where over 200 players were in a server at once (which produced one of the best multiplayer clips of all time), John Romero's recent deathmatches, and the Doom 2 tournaments in QuakeCon 2019 and 2020. There are players but it isn't 2004 anymore. Most people aren't willing to sit in a server for more than 60 seconds alone to get a game going. Join the Discord and it's very easy to get a game started.

[princetontiger]

On 6/18/2021 at 12:47 AM, Ralphis said:

 

People are on Odamex every single day! Typically coop/survival servers, but most people can easily get a duel by sitting in a server for a few minutes. The top CTF players, some of which are from the "ZDaemon Peak" of the mid-00s, also play on Odamex in the World Doom League. Most games are organized on the Odamex Discord.

 

Odamex has played host to almost all of the high profile multiplayer events over the past two years including Decino's 40k subscriber special where over 200 players were in a server at once (which produced one of the best multiplayer clips of all time), John Romero's recent deathmatches, and the Doom 2 tournaments in QuakeCon 2019 and 2020. There are players but it isn't 2004 anymore. Most people aren't willing to sit in a server for more than 60 seconds alone to get a game going. Join the Discord and it's very easy to get a game started.

 

That video is absolutely incredible... I remember that CTF map a lot from 2004-2006. OK, you convinced me. I'll give it a try

[Somniac]

I need to check out Odamex as Zandronum is mostly just full of survival invasion matches running with mods, and I dont see regular co op or death match games come up often enough. ZDaemon has had nobody on it at all whenever I've looked.

[princetontiger]

1 hour ago, VisionThing said:

I need to check out Odamex as Zandronum is mostly just full of survival invasion matches running with mods, and I dont see regular co op or death match games come up often enough. ZDaemon has had nobody on it at all whenever I've looked.

 

Exactly... Im not sure how Zandro devolved into this invasion madness... I stopped playing around 2017-2018 when the 'zombie' survival rage was happening. It was fun for a bit, but it almost felt like people came for those games and not Doom itself

[Doomkid]

While it's not a surefire fix - some zaney mods that are not my speed at all still show up - in Doom Explorer you can easily make it so only servers using doom.wad/doom1.wad/doom2.wad/tnt.wad/plutonia.wad and the freedom wads are used as the IWAD by using the built in server filter. This wipes any and all trace of MegaGame and other weird non-Doom stuff off the list which makes it far easier to navigate..

 

Apparently there are over 80 people playing right now on Zandronum, but I only see less than 50 of them with the non-Doom junk filtered out. (Edit: I feel bad calling CutmanMike's baby "junk", I don't really mean that, it's just not something I'm interested in)

 

6 hours ago, VisionThing said:

I need to check out Odamex as Zandronum is mostly just full of survival invasion matches running with mods, and I dont see regular co op or death match games come up often enough. ZDaemon has had nobody on it at all whenever I've looked.

As in, actually 0 people? That's pretty freaky.. I just booted up Doom Explorer and I see 13 people on ZDaemon, and it's a pretty slow time of day, not prime time. Not a big crowd by any stretch, but if I see 0 people on ZDaemon that would depress the hell outta me.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Doomkid

[princetontiger]

Nobody as in like 10 or less

[OpenRift]

The key these days to finding games is joining communities on discord (or IRC if you're lucky) and coordinating a game with them. 

[Somniac]

45 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

As in, actually 0 people? That's pretty freaky.. I just booted up Doom Explorer and I see 13 people on ZDaemon, and it's a pretty slow time of day, not prime time. Not a big crowd by any stretch, but if I see 0 people on ZDaemon that would depress the hell outta me.

 

It's probably a time zone thing, I'm in the UK so whenever I looked in the evening would (I imagine) not be peak Doom time in the US where I imagine much of the player base is. Though there are quite a few Brazilian servers on Zandro!