Did Doom II feel like a slog when it was released?

[princetontiger]

I have read countless posts on doomworld and reddit about Doom II's shitty level designs... did it feel this way 30 years ago?

 

I am on map20... and it feels like a giant slog that I don't really want to finish. 

[oneselfSelf]

The way we discuss level design or rather game design in general in modern times was absolutely way different back then. What would be considered "shitty" or a "slog" had no real comparison. If a level was "bad" it was given a pass for being a first timer or not even really looked upon in first place.

 

You could probably find discussions on old Usenet posts about what people considered as the worst levels (A good example could be the reaction to "Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap" from Marathon which one of the designers made a small apology note about it in the sequel.) but in my studies reading gaming magazines I've found that most reviewers and non-hardcore players didn't care too much about level design until years later.

Edited June 12 by oneselfSelf

[RHhe82]

It was a different time - I liked Doom 2’s maps much better in 1995 than I do now — but I still remember being slightly disappointed. Doom 2 was good, it had new monsters (although I didn’t hell knights because they were reskins of barons… now I like hell knights better) and SSG, but maps were less exciting, midis weren’t as good. Still good, but no Doom 1. This gap between Doom/Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 has widened considerably in 30 years.

[Maximum Matt]

It was glorious.  You're too young to understand.  

[Sinnesloeschen]

To me Doom 2 felt lazy. Really lazy.

 

This is the big Hell on Earth thing? The sequel to Doom?

 

It's the same damn thing, with some more stuff and worse map designs. At a time where maps and mods allready showed what you can do with the engine.

 

Now keep in mind i was 14 when Doom 2 came out - These days i realize due to the Shareware model of Doom 1 they just wanted some payout with Doom 2. Doesn't make it less lazy, but i probably would've done the same. ;)

[VICE]

Hold ☐ to complain on the internet.

[esselfortium]

3 hours ago, princetontiger said:

Did Doom II feel like a slog when it was released?

Nope. And it still doesn't!

[Sonikkumania]

Hell no it was awesome.

[DSC]

1 hour ago, Sinnesloeschen said:

To me Doom 2 felt lazy. Really lazy.

You can prefer Doom 1 over 2, but I still can't get behind this logic. The levels in Doom 2 are way bigger, more experimental, daring and willing to take risks. They're the exact opposite of "lazy", the scope and ambition far surpasses Doom 1.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Maybe certain maps, but as a whole it was fine the first time I played it (after Ultimate Doom). The new stuff outweighed the occasional level design problems. I did think TNT was mostly a slog, though. Same for a lot of the Master Levels.

Edited June 12 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[yakfak]

i love almost every map in doom2.wad but I think megawad structure itself is a slog. honestly need a port which saves and quits when you beat a map and doesn't let you open it again until tomorrow

[TasAcri]

Nah, i remember loving it. And for the longest time The Courtyard was my all time favorite DOOM map.

[Maximum Matt]

13 minutes ago, yakfak said:

honestly need a port which saves and quits when you beat a map and doesn't let you open it again until tomorrow

Blue Balls Doom.  Someone get on that.

[jazzmaster9]

57 minutes ago, DSC said:

You can prefer Doom 1 over 2, but I still can't get behind this logic. The levels in Doom 2 are way bigger, more experimental, daring and willing to take risks. They're the exact opposite of "lazy", the scope and ambition far surpasses Doom 1.

the "Lazy Dev" thing is pretty much a buzz word for "they didn't make it the way i want because they wanted to actually clock out at 5pm"

Imagine making a huge chunk of Doom 2's map pool then being called Lazy by a random player. 

Edited June 12 by jazzmaster9

[Sinnesloeschen]

1 hour ago, DSC said:

You can prefer Doom 1 over 2, but I still can't get behind this logic. The levels in Doom 2 are way bigger, more experimental, daring and willing to take risks. They're the exact opposite of "lazy", the scope and ambition far surpasses Doom 1.

 

It wasn't mainly about the maps for me. I mean i wasn't overly impressed, especially with the "real place" like maps (As i wrote before, you could get better looking and flowing maps allready on coverdisks and the like).

 

My main issue though was the fact that Doom 2 looks and plays exactly like Doom 1 during a time where FPS games made huge technical leaps and the entire gaming genre was going forward fast. And then you get the follow up to THE game that personified that technical progress like no other....and it's basically just an expansion pack.

 

THAT is why it felt lazy to me - When i was 14. In 1994.

[magicsofa]

No, not really, and it still doesn't. I'm a little surprised you are picking on Gotcha, a fairly straightforward map IMO. Most people complain about the more sprawling maps like The Chasm or Industrial Zone.

 

The par times add up to 94 minutes (quick tally, could be off). So a fast player should be able to get through the entire game in 1.5 hours. If you are a beginner and playing on UV, you simply can't expect to beat it that fast. One thing that might skew people's perspective is that back in the 90s, we actually chose the difficulty setting that seemed right for us. We also played with our friends and helped each other and read strategy guides and walkthroughs. If really stuck we might have even used a cheat code here and there because we weren't always obsessive about completion.

 

So, no, it wasn't a slog at all. It was a lot of maps to play and that was a good thing. If you were a beginner you could pick beginner difficulty and enjoy the game as a beginner should. If you were a veteran you could challenge yourself. If you were a speedrunner you could beat the game in under 30 minutes.

 

You want slog? Go play through all six episodes of Wolfenstein 3D. Or try Hexen without a walkthrough. You'll be crawling back to mommy Doom2 within an hour.

[Li'l devil]

I wonder if the map design was perceived as confusing back then or was it considered normal for the day. When I got into classic Doom when I was 11, my biggest problem was navigating the maps. I got lost everywhere and just couldn't beat a lot of maps. It could be because I was coming from 2000s shooters which tended to be very clear as to where you should go.

[Vermil]

EDIT: Please delete me.

Edited June 12 by Vermil

[esselfortium]

1 hour ago, Sinnesloeschen said:

 

It wasn't mainly about the maps for me. I mean i wasn't overly impressed, especially with the "real place" like maps (As i wrote before, you could get better looking and flowing maps allready on coverdisks and the like).

 

My main issue though was the fact that Doom 2 looks and plays exactly like Doom 1 during a time where FPS games made huge technical leaps and the entire gaming genre was going forward fast. And then you get the follow up to THE game that personified that technical progress like no other....and it's basically just an expansion pack.

 

THAT is why it felt lazy to me - When i was 14. In 1994.

Okay, I'm curious now. Which custom maps from 1994 would you say are better looking and flowing than the average Doom 2 level? I was also playing custom maps in the mid-90s and from what I recall it seemed incredibly rare for anything to even approach the quality of the official maps, even a few years later.

 

Also, Doom 2 doesn't play the same as Doom 1. Nearly every monster in Doom 1 is an imp: regular imp, taller imp with more health, imp with splash damage, flying imp, etc. Doom 2 allows for vastly more complex and varied encounter design by introducing monsters that require different strategies and demand different types of time/spatial awareness from the player. The possible combinations of all those behaviors have helped make Doom 2 such an effective canvas for so many different schools of mapping to develop from over the past 30 years.

[DiavoJinx]

38 minutes ago, esselfortium said:

Okay, I'm curious now. Which custom maps from 1994 would you say are better looking and flowing than the average Doom 2 level? I was also playing custom maps in the mid-90s and from what I recall it seemed incredibly rare for anything to even approach the quality of the official maps, even a few years later.

 

Also, Doom 2 doesn't play the same as Doom 1. Nearly every monster in Doom 1 is an imp: regular imp, taller imp with more health, imp with splash damage, flying imp, etc. Doom 2 allows for vastly more complex and varied encounter design by introducing monsters that require different strategies and demand different types of time/spatial awareness from the player. The possible combinations of all those behaviors have helped make Doom 2 such an effective canvas for so many different schools of mapping to develop from over the past 30 years.

That person you're presenting good logic to appears to be stuck in their own personal bubble. >.>

[Gifty]

"Doom 2 is terrible" seems to be some kind of increasingly self-perpetuating meme argument that is trying to Mandela everyone into thinking it's always been around.

[roadworx]

i think you guys are missing the part where he says that's what he thought in 1994 when he was 14 lol

[Gez]

Just now, Gifty said:

"Doom 2 is terrible" seems to be some kind of increasingly self-perpetuating meme argument that is trying to Mandela everyone into thinking it's always been around.

Eh, it has.

 

Look at Joystick's review of Doom II where they gave it a note of merely 20% for players who already had Doom...

[Ravendesk]

 

2 hours ago, magicsofa said:

One thing that might skew people's perspective is that back in the 90s, we actually chose the difficulty setting that seemed right for us.

That's not true, as a 4 year old kid playing Doom for the first time in the 90s I refused to play on anything but Ultraviolence (because I thought the name sounded cool and I thought it meant Ultraviolet).

[Shepardus]

Gamers in 1994 didn't have a queue of dozens of megawads to check out, so spending some quality time with Doom II wasn't a slog, it was what they paid for.

[Christopher Brown]

Doom II isn't terrible. It is - in my subjective opinion - a mixed bag.

I got into Doom for the first time last year, as part of a move towards finally exploring my gaming hobby properly after many years of focusing on other things. I had a blast playing Doom 1, it's what made me fall in love with the series, and my enjoyment was enough to make me overlook all the times I had to check a walkthrough (cough, Deimos Labs, cough).

I definitely enjoyed aspects of Doom 2 as I played it. I instantly fell in love with the SSG. I wasn't too impressed by the new monsters other than the Pain Elemental, and that's just because it was adorable in the same way as the Cacodemon - the monsters felt derivative or underwhelming in execution. (I've since come around to all of them on account of how much personality and versatility they have.)

That said...The Citadel is the point where I called up a friend of mine who works at Bungie to ask him if it was a me problem that I had no idea where to go after 45+ minutes, and he wryly suggested that that was a dev problem, not mine. :D

I'm of two minds on Doom II's design. I think the Roots of Doom Mapping article does a great job spotlighting that the levels aren't lazy, that conceptually they're taking some wild swings and vastly innovating on the successful but straightforward Doom 1 template. I just think whether that experimentation leads to something that's enjoyable to run around in or even look at varies wildly between levels, and I won't lie, I have found Doom II a slog both times I've played through the campaign. I think the community has taken Doom II's design approach and vastly, vastly improved on most everything the campaign does at some point or another. On the other hand: the levels that I like, I wouldn't trade for anything - and that actually includes quite a lot of the last 10 levels, the section that sometimes gets the most flack. I'll go to bat for The Chasm. And I haven't actually found a variation on Barrels of Fun or The Living End that tops my affection for the originals for me, come to think of it.

Regarding how good or not Doom II's campaign was when it was released...I've been playing through Wolfenstein 3D lately, and it's striking to me how clear it is that Id had, in practice, no idea what they were doing then: what kind of combat would be entertaining? What would be the best approach be to building spaces? Is the objective to make the player feel trapped in a maze, and is that actually not preferable to making them live out a power fantasy? These were questions that don't seem to have an answer because they were literally inventing FPS mechanics from full cloth, and there was nothing to compare it to. There was no defined rulebook that said what an ideal FPS level would play like or that obtuse, baffling progression wasn't the order of the day. And of course, back then the innovations that new releases brought to the table were often the point of focus. I tried playing Duke Nukem 3D the other day, and while I enjoyed the enemies and weapons, I found the levels I played sluggish and unexciting to run around in compared to Doom, sloped floors or no. Basically, it's a miracle that Doom 1 and 2 play as well as they do today. I think they certainly would have sufficed at the time.

[Sinnesloeschen]

14 minutes ago, roadworx said:

i think you guys are missing the part where he says that's what he thought in 1994 when he was 14 lol

 

:J That.

 

Also you have to keep in mind i grew up in germany and it was 30 years ago...dear lord.

Details are fuzzy but i'm pretty sure i didn't get my hands on Doom 2 on release (Possibly not even in 1994 at all), and when me and my friends did....acquire... it (Don't worry, i bought enough Doom 2s over the years ;) ) there was a plethora of maps and mods avaible. We had the CDs right there. With, just for a big example, The Aliens Total Conversion:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/aliens-tc

 

Alsoalso, since i feel you people seem to think i hate this game, i love Doom 2. It's one of my favorite games and i spent a shitton of time with it over the years. If i want to play Doom now, i play Doom 2. So no hate here, somehow i allways happen to check this forum when someone posts a thread like this lol. :p

 

It's just when i first saw and played it back then i pretty much felt exactly like the notes of the Joystick review Gez mentioned:

 

"Score: Technical 95%, Interest 20% (Doom owners)"

 

If that doesn't illustrate my point enough this is how the id timeline went for me. Personally.

:

 

Wolf 3D -> Doom -> Doom 2 -> Quake

 

There is only Doom 2 in there that didn't come with a new engine. It's the only one that didn't do anything spectacular and fresh. And that is why i was underwhelmed back...sometime in the mid 90s when i first played it.

 

If that makes me a hater in a bubble: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Sinnesloeschen]

3 minutes ago, Christopher Brown said:

Doom II isn't terrible. It is - in my subjective opinion - a mixed bag.
(...)

 

Haha, now that is a callback review phrase. Couldn't have summed it up better.

[dpJudas]

I saw Doom 2 as basic "more maps" rerun game back in 1994 when comparing it to Doom 1. I saw Descent 2 as the same thing compared to Descent 1. We were used to each new game making interesting advancements on the engine for each new game and Doom 2 just didn't do that. I was 16 at the time.

 

I think its important to note here that most people didn't focus on the maps or the monsters because we had just played Wolfenstein 3D. Then we saw Doom. Then we went to see Duke Nukem 3D, Descent, Terminal Velocity, Quake, Ultima Online, etc. Who cares about the maps when you have new worlds opening before your eyes when all you had prior to that was 2D games? :)

 

Doom 2? that was just a filler while we were waiting for the next great thing. I can only speak for myself, but that also seemed like what most people felt in my town.

[Andrea Rovenski]

doom 2 being the first game to be sold in stores kind of makes a lot of this argument moot. a ton of people started with doom 2 instead of doom 1 (myself included) for that major reason

Edited June 12 by Andrea Rovenski