Bethesda/id officially plug Brutal Doom on "Doom" Twitter

[ChickenOrBeef]

Kontra Kommando said:

9 times out of 10, a real fan of metal would also like Brutal Doom.

Your argument would make more sense if it were, "Some fans of traditional Heavy Metal, dislike Death and Black Metal because its more extreme".

I wasn't using the music analogy to convey which styles of music Doom fans like. I used the analogy because Metalcore/Nu Metal and Brutal Doom seem to be treated in a similar way within their respective communities.

[Obzen]

Kontra Kommando said:

9 times out of 10, a real fan of metal would also like Brutal Doom.

Your argument would make more sense if it were, "Some fans of traditional Heavy Metal, dislike Death and Black Metal because its more extreme".

Discussion of genre doesn't really seem to properly explain why some Doom fans dislike Brutal Doom. I think if we were going to do a music analogy, a better example would be a cover song.

Judas Priest have a song called Dissident Aggressor. It's awesome and epic and plenty of people love it. Slayer decides to cover this song, except they make it all Slayery and stuff. That's fine, except some of the core reasons why people love Judas Priest are gone from this Slayer version: No Rob Halford, bad solos. It's a cool diversion and it doesn't bother anyone... until people start saying that the Slayer version is the superior version and claim it's THE one to listen to. I think that's the problem here.

Brutal Doom wasn't being hated on until media and some newer fans claimed it was superior to the original Doom, even though it changes the fundamental flow of the game. It's still good by default because it uses the same levels, just like Dissident Aggressor is still a great song, but don't go throwing around how Slayer's version is way better to Judas Priest fans, because it's more than likely that you just like the song for different reasons. Brutal Doom's popularity was destined to rattle the cage, not because of how better or worse it is, but because of how different it is.

In a Nutshell:

Band: id Software
Song: Doom
Covered by: SGtMarkIV

[StevieWolfe]

I play pretty much every map I can in Brutal Doom, I don't get the hate for it. Doom is a senselessly violent game and brutal doom ramps that up 10 fold. So whats the deal?

[Tuxlar]

StevieCybernetik said:

I play pretty much every map I can in Brutal Doom, I don't get the hate for it. Doom is a senselessly violent game and brutal doom ramps that up 10 fold. So whats the deal?

Objectively, it imbalances (and even outright breaks) many pwads for being popularly (and incorrectly) considered interchangeable with vanilla doom's gameplay. Never mind the wads/mods that supply their own, often-conflicting/incompatible game modifications.

Subjectively, it trolls the pre-existing community in about every way possible:

1. Skims away doom's 'arcade-ey' style in favor of cheaper, modern-style fast-gratification gameplay and content. Also attracts some of the expected audience, in doing so.
   
2. Takes its exaggerated gore, violence, and hateful expression a bit more seriously than even Doom itself seemed to have in mind. Doom's already experienced its share of controversy, in its time. You can practically hear the stitches popping, since this came around.
   
3. Captures tons of attention with high-novelty audio/visual/gameplay embellishments. Wad/mod makers jelly of the attention.
   
4. Wholly embraces some of the worst-offending modern port features already criticized for being "not doom" in spirit.
   
5. Offends even the newfangled port-communities by capturing enough user mindspace to assimilate awareness of their technologies unto itself. "OMG did u know Brutal Doom adds jumping and freelook and high resolution graphics to Doom?????"
   
6. Author is apparently unpopular with much of the community. Politics involved.

That about sums up what I'm aware of.

[Doominator2]

The worst part of Bdoom is the voice acting. The doom guy sounds retarded and the marines you save sound like a 15 year old playing COD.

[Quasar]

Tuxlar said:

Objectively, it imbalances (and even outright breaks) many pwads for being popularly (and incorrectly) considered interchangeable with vanilla doom's gameplay. Never mind the wads/mods that supply their own, often-conflicting/incompatible game modifications.

Subjectively, it trolls the pre-existing community in about every way possible:...
That about sums up what I'm aware of.

One more for your list that I've heard: "Does it run Brutal Doom??," or, "That doesn't support Brutal Doom," in discussions about other source ports.

If you wanna chaff my hide you just found out a really good way :P

[SYS]

Tuxlar said:

Objectively, it imbalances (and even outright breaks) many pwads for being popularly (and incorrectly) considered interchangeable with vanilla doom's gameplay.

I don't see the imbalance being an issue if the person is enjoying themselves. Especially for a single player romp, or agreed upon WAD loadout for coop. Why do you hate fun so much? The same can argument can be applied to every weapons WAD ever made, only they aren't Brutal Doom.

Tuxlar said:

Never mind the wads/mods that supply their own, often-conflicting/incompatible game modifications.
That about sums up what I'm aware of.

If they try playing Brutal Doom with something like Zan Zan they get the functionality that they deserve.

Tuxlar said:

Subjectively, it trolls the pre-existing community in about every way possible

I see that only as a positive, as people tend to take things too seriously.

[Koko Ricky]

My main issue with Brutal Doom is that it's too damned ambitious. When you add that many enhancements to a game, the very nature of having it developed by a bunch of people collaborating online guarantees an imbalanced, inconsistent product. There was a lack of boundaries in BD's design that can turn a game session into a mess of overly powerful monsters, blood covering too many surfaces, monster-based triggers that fail, ear rape and other issues. It's a mod that had so much potential, and is still fun from time to time, but ultimately is too insistent on itself.

[Tuxlar]

SYS said:

I don't see the imbalance being an issue if the person is enjoying themselves. Especially for a single player romp, or agreed upon WAD loadout for coop. The same can argument can be applied to every weapons WAD ever made, only they aren't Brutal Doom.

A person enjoying themselves with fast-gratification entertainment is about analogous to a person eating food because it tastes good. But I won't get into that.

The part of the argument that differs is that weapon mods are meant to be regarded as just that: Optional modifications. Brutal Doom, however, seems to be a lot of peoples' primary way of playing, which forces some wad authors to either have to accommodate or alienate.

I should probably indicate with my text files from now on if my maps are weapon/gameplay mod incompatible, now that I think about it...

[Koko Ricky]

I would honestly disagree with Brutal Doom being an experience in which "fast gratification" was a key component. There have been times when battles were tense and drawn out, due to being overpowered and having to really conserve ammo. I've had many moments were the battle took longer than in vanilla because of this.

[Tuxlar]

GoatLord said:

I would honestly disagree with Brutal Doom being an experience in which "fast gratification" was a key component. There have been times when battles were tense and drawn out, due to being overpowered and having to really conserve ammo. I've had many moments were the battle took longer than in vanilla because of this.

Fast gratification is not the same as fast battles.

[Obzen]

Tuxlar said:

A person enjoying themselves with fast-gratification entertainment is about analogous to a person eating food because it tastes good. But I won't get into that.

The part of the argument that differs is that weapon mods are meant to be regarded as just that: Optional modifications. Brutal Doom, however, seems to be a lot of peoples' primary way of playing, which forces some wad authors to either have to accommodate or alienate.

I should probably indicate with my text files from now on if my maps are weapon/gameplay mod incompatible, now that I think about it...

There should be no reason to mention such a thing. Maps are balanced for vanilla unless they implicitly say otherwise. It's not the your fault that the person doesn't actually like the game you are making a map for unless he is playing with a specific mod.

[geo]

Quasar said:

https://twitter.com/DOOM/status/491746826375417857

This would seem to put aside any speculation on whether or not they were inspired by it. Discuss ;)

Well at least now they're inspired by something other than Half Life 1.

[Tuxlar]

Obzen said:

There should be no reason to mention such a thing. Maps are balanced for vanilla unless they implicitly say otherwise. It's not your fault that the person doesn't actually like the game you are making a map for unless he is playing with a specific mod.

Well, there's a difference between 'balanced for vanilla' versus 'strictly depends on vanilla'. Am I counting on terrain to control monster movements that gets compromised by even small changes in monster behavior/size/mobility? Do I provide a fixed amount of ammo for killing a non-skippable boss enemy?

They're probably just hypothetical concerns for most maps, especially if you make your map very loosely (no 'strict' expectations that monsters will take X amount of pepper to kill, Y amount of space to move, etc.) However, like anything in the software world, even the small, unlikely stuff can lead to big consequences, so I'd imagine cases where it could easily be justified.

[Average]

I think mentioning whether your maps work with other mods would just be a nice courtesy in the same way that map makers state the preferred source port and IWAD. There are so many mods and mutators around it would just be nice to see at a glance whether a map conflicts with weapons or other mods rather than playing through for 10 minutes and then finding out!

It could just be mentioned under the "May not run with..." part of the standard readme. :)

[Janus3003]

Tuxlar said:

Takes its exaggerated gore, violence, and hateful expression a bit more seriously than even Doom itself seemed to have in mind.

When I first saw Brutal Doom, I thought the over-the-top violence was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But as the updates came out and the make kept being himself, I've since concluded that that's probably not what it was made for.

[Maes]

Thread automatically invalidated by opening the "But is X Metal?" can of worms. Speaking of which, is Metallica Metal?

[Koko Ricky]

Maes said:

Thread automatically invalidated by opening the "But is X Metal?" can of worms. Speaking of which, is Metallica Metal?

No one mentioned metal after the first two responses on this page … until you did.

[Kaskaum]

I expect to see some real damage on monsters, even modern FPS games don't do it, you shoot at something and only see some blood spills, but there is no damage on the body of the target.

So I want to see the bodies of the demons suffering the damage of my shots, but off course, it must be gore but at the same time beffiting the situation. Brutal Doom goes beyong that which makes it looks cheesy. But it can serve as inspiration to put some real-like damage in this new Doom.

I personally like Brutal Doom not because the gore, but because the weapons, they are much more badass than the original weapons and recharging don't slow down the gameplay because the monsters are too slow and lame while Doomguy is faster than anything else and is smarter.

I hope the new Doom brings smarter AI and faster monsters to make Doomguy's life harder.

[Touchdown]

In many ways hatred that people feel towards BD clouds their judgement. At the core, A LOT of the features in BD are either natural expansions of the original ideas or things that simply improve the shooter experience.

Detailed dismemberment? Soldier of Fortune did it and it makes sense in a DOOM game.

Hit reactions (crawling, pulling out a pistol to shoot while down on the floor, etc)? RAGE did it and it was awesome. Definitively put it in DOOM4.

Different damage types depending on a weapon? Absolutely, put it in DOOM4.

A chainsaw that actually cuts? That... simply... makes sense. Right? It's a chainSAW. A tool used for cutting. Of course using it against living things will be very bloody and gory.
______________________

Here's the kicker. Do you know why it looks silly in BD? Because these features are objectively stupid and BD is stupid and SgtMkIV is stupid? No. Because we're talking about 1993 technology: cartoonish sprites with huge pixels, a couple of frames of animation, arcade feel. Adding more blood or something simply makes it look cluttery and ridiculous not because the ideas are bad but because that's the nature of this outdated technology.

So yes, it doesn't work in BD. But imagine those features realized with a modern technology, top-of-the-line character models and proffesionally made animations. It's a WORLD OF A DIFFERENCE. That's precisely why I'm not worried about the potential influence of BD on DOOM4. As long as they implement things that will make the experience more visceral and responsive, I don't see a problem.

[snapshot]

Hmm ....

[Avoozl]

If you look at Soldier of Fortune: Payback the heavy focus on its gore is what made it fail as a game.