I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'm having a hard time playing the classic "DOOM" bi-logy.

[Aaron Blain]

One of the things that makes Doom superior to other videogames is that it intrinsically rewards player aggression without recourse to top-down mechanics like Glory Kills.

 

So:

 

- Doom rewards you for exposing yourself to enemy fire. When you pop your head out, baddies shoot at you and this stimulates infighting.

- Doom demands that you advance into enemy territory to claim resources. In fact, if you are accustomed to modern fps games (and modern games in general unfortunately), they have gone to great lengths to eliminate any concept of territory. They progress like Streets of Rage -- you walk forward, enemies spontaneously appear, you fight them until they stop appearing and then you walk forward and the scenery scrolls. Modern games really should have a beatemup style flashing arrow that says GO => when you are done killing things and it is time for the background to scroll. Doom is not like that. Doom is a wargame.

[Lucius Wooding]

22 minutes ago, Aaron Blain said:

- Doom rewards you for exposing yourself to enemy fire. When you pop your head out, baddies shoot at you and this stimulates infighting.

- Doom demands that you advance into enemy territory to claim resources. In fact, if you are accustomed to modern fps games (and modern games in general unfortunately), they have gone to great lengths to eliminate any concept of territory. They progress like Streets of Rage -- you walk forward, enemies spontaneously appear, you fight them until they stop appearing and then you walk forward and the scenery scrolls. Modern games really should have a beatemup style flashing arrow that says GO => when you are done killing things and it is time for the background to scroll. Doom is not like that. Doom is a wargame.

 

It doesn't necessarily reward aggression, some maps are better suited to a stealthy or entirely pacifist approach. Although running into enemy fire can work out well, it doesn't reward you as much as it simply creates chaos. You're still subject to far more danger than you would be taking cover, depending on what you're fighting. Projectile based enemies and hitscan enemies are opposites in this regard, as the former will chase you down and melee you to death if you hide, yet will easily be outmaneuvered in the open. The latter are there to punish you for exposing yourself to fire, and force you to slow down if there isn't lots of health around. Finally, many enemy types simply won't infight depending on what's deployed in an area and how their positions are set up. For example turret enemies that shoot over one another, or large groups of the same type. I believe infighting was added just to make the enemy AI more interesting, since it would be extremely boring to fight in its simple form. That, and for flavor reasons to play up the demons being very savage.

 

Also claiming resources doesn't require you to advance at all in many cases. That's totally dependent on the map itself and the style it goes for. The Mucus Flow is a good example where there are hardly any resources outside the starting area and infighting is almost impossible to really utilize. You may need to explore to find the map's progression, but resources are only secondary. In most cases it's not even necessary to collect any resources outside of keys in order to reach the exit. Then there are the maps such as the slaughter genre in many cases, where they often do work exactly like Streets of Rage. The only difference is that the standard design elements don't favor forcing the player to kill every enemy in an area to progress because this isn't a fully developed feature; Dead Simple is an exception because it has hardcoded sector actions once each enemy type is dead. Certainly custom maps using more advanced features or using alternatives like a timer for progression still exist though.

 

I've heard Doom described as a lot of different genres including an adventure game, survival horror, and there are certainly puzzle based, exploration heavy, and even platforming maps. Hell, there are even tower defense wads and the like. But a wargame? I have to disagree with that. It's the lowest level conflict possible consisting of a single entity, there is no element of coordination or larger strategy aside from staying alive and reaching the exit. Its gameplay has more in common with Asteroids than most of that genre. Even something like D&D at least uses party mechanics, and in theory things aren't as asymmetrical as Doom where the player has far more capabilities than the enemies, so it's more of a turn based parity between sides. I'd say if you want to argue Doom is a wargame, it's no more so than Streets of Rage is.

[Aaron Blain]

Yeah you definitely have substantial variety between genres of levels. I can't make too many universal statements about how Doom works. I personally really enjoyed how Sigil leans into the survival horror modality a little bit, for example.

 

What I mean is that Doom (especially "straight" or "ordinary" or "classic" style Doom gameplay) is very often about choosing which enemy positions you're going to attack and conquer. Over time, you secure more and more of the map, and sometimes your secure territory gets counterattacked by monster closets and teleporters. A big part of Doom level design is RTS-style "guard towers". Do you invest the resources in killing that hellknight or revenant on his little platform, or do you decide to endure his suppressing fire?

 

In fact, building on what I said in a more specific way, Doom very often rewards you for pressing forward to capture resources before you've fully "mopped up" in the current area. If you're making the assumption that you always have to kill every monster in each room before progressing, you're going to find yourself running out of ammo much more often.

 

If you're used to taking the stop n pop, velvet rope approach to level progression, Doom is going to often give you a hard time. I've had many times where I was struggling with a level until I figured out that enduring a minute or so of "running scared" until I could grab an SSG or a RL enabled me to then turn around and waste the baddies like Pac-Man grabbing a power pill.

 

I think these are the sorts of things that might take some adjustment for someone whose frame of reference is based on post-Half Life fps games.

[Lucius Wooding]

26 minutes ago, Aaron Blain said:

In fact, building on what I said in a more specific way, Doom very often rewards you for pressing forward to capture resources before you've fully "mopped up" in the current area. If you're making the assumption that you always have to kill every monster in each room before progressing, you're going to find yourself running out of ammo much more often.

Yeah this I can agree with in many cases. I think Plutonia comes to mind for leaning on this kind of approach. Lots of the maps require you to hunt down weapons since the starts are often very dangerous, particularly if you're pistol starting. It also rewards fighting from a good position where Doom 1 seldom has big fights of any kind and Doom 2 usually gives you enough space and is much more forgiving if you get into a bad position. Doom 1 and 2 will almost always let you get away with clearing the starting area with just pistol and shotgun and tends to place the heavier enemies later into maps. One of my friends who never played Plutonia until recently pointed this out as a crucial approach to many harder mapsets that isn't really emphasized in Doom 1 and 2.

[treulosetomate]

Lots of great answers in this thread. I wonder if any of them were helpful to @Ooyayoolyah.