I'm quite curious to see what Quake would look like given a similar treatment as the new Doom games got. That is, distilled down to a pure essence of what the original was trying to achieve.
The community pretty much brought it to a new height. The custom engine looks cool and the new map packs/mods reflect the height of Quake level design.
worse even, it killed off many vibrant quake 3 communities that had been going from 1999 to 2008 because half the people started playing quake live and the other half stopped playing alltogether
The community was on life support, and the attempt (Quake Live) wasn't enough to bring people back to good eSports, as the market had moved on from pure skill based games.
It was extremely difficult to play for newcomers. You almost didn't even get a chance to frag old school players once because of the skill discrepancy. I could hang with most of the higher tier guys, but there were some that just seemed nearly invincible. They should have had more resources for developing skills. After I stopped playing, I discovered that some were playing Q3 at ramped up physics speeds in single player. When going back to playing at regular speed, it feels like you're playing in slow motion.
>> It was extremely difficult to play for newcomers. You almost didn't even get a chance to frag old school players once because of the skill discrepancy.
I think games say a lot about generations.
In the old days you had to persist a lot and be a bit of a "hacker" to play Quake, or at least have basic computer skills. I remember how difficult it was to configure Qizmo for Quake World.
Nowadays everything is ready for you to play and even if you are a beginner you can play with the most experienced. In Quake you can spend 1 year playing and not win a single match.
>>Nowadays everything is ready for you to play and even if you are a beginner you can play with the most experienced. In Quake you can spend 1 year playing and not win a single match.
I mean......saying this as a game developer - this is a good thing. You want people to come in and enjoy the game, and not be frustrated by it. Obviously there should still be a mode somewhere where you can truly test your skills and where the top players hang out(in multiplayer shooters that's usually what the ranked mode is for), but new players should be able to just jump in and have a good time. I believe this is a huge part of why games like Fortnite are so successful - because no matter what is your skill level, you will always have a good time, but it also offers an incredibly high skill level ceiling for people who really want to put in the hours.
>>I think games say a lot about generations.
I'm not sure if that is about generations, more about the market - when Q3 came out the only other major game in that space was Unreal Tournament. Nowadays you have so much choice that if a game frustrates you you can always pick a different one. And the market has been completely "ruined" by gamepass and endless promotions, so people don't have attachment to games like they used to. Sure some of them do if they spent £50 on a game, but for an increasing number of games and people, that just isn't true anymore. There is no cost associated with trying a game on Gamepass for 20 minutes and abandoning it.
> I discovered that some were playing Q3 at ramped up physics speeds in single player. When going back to playing at regular speed, it feels like you're playing in slow motion.
That's amazing, like training at altitude but for e-sports.
it's not actually that helpful because a lot of the skill comes from muscle memory
and that's not just for aiming but mousemovement also has a significant influence on movement
for example there's something called a circle jump where you use precise mouse movement to get the most efficient angles so that your movement speed is maximized from your first jump
The new Doom games have little to do with the original Doom gameplay, perhaps because it wasn't that good in retrospect. For Quake there would be more potential for something like a remake.
Strongly disagree that the new Doom games have better gameplay than the old ones. Every fight is a giant monster trap. IMO it showcases the worst aspect of the original doom games.
> unless you're saying that the best part of the original Doom games were the labyrinthine level design
Not the best part, but certainly one of the best parts. Doom and Doom 2 did labyrinths really well, much better than wolf3d (wolf's labyrinths were too samey and dull due to engine constraints) and I think better than nearly any game since. Games started foregoing labyrinths around when Half Life 1 came out (see also: Daggerfall vs Morrowind), I think because labyrinths filter plebs. But if you stick with Doom it'll teach you to have better spatial awareness that trivializes level learning in most other games. The new doom games particularly have linear level design very reminiscent of Half Life with some arena sections interspersed; they don't feel like Doom levels at all (except in very superficial ways, like "mars/hell themed".)
Such modern games lend themselves to navigating levels without maintaining a working knowledge of where you've been; at each instant your navigation choices may be informed by what you see on the screen right then without regard for what you've seen before. You can play Doom that way too, you'll get to the end eventually through brute force, but Doom does an excellent job of encouraging you to do better and develop your skill. If you remember where you are in relation to where you've already been, you can anticipate when a path is looping around to where you've already been before you actually round that corner. Maintaining orientation in this way, especially in a labyrinth, is a skill Doom excels at teaching. When you get good at it, such awareness of the level instills a sense of presence that just can't be conveyed any other way. Most modern games don't try to teach it; they expect that novice players won't be good at navigation and so, in the name of accessibility and mainstream appeal, refrain from challenging those players.
Many early first-person games (pre Wolfenstein 3D) were dungeon crawlers, not shooters, so the labyrinth design of early Id games reflects that heritage. Modern single player shooters have now very much abandoned this approach in favor of linear level design (Half-Life / Call if Duty approach), or they went straight into the "open world" direction (Farcry approach), which also doesn't feature dungeon/labyrinth levels. Closer in terms of non-linear level design is perhaps Metroid Prime (which recently got a remake), but it focuses more on environmental puzzles than on shooting.
There are probably indie games which are close to the original Doom formula. They often feature genres that have been neglected by big studios.
Gunplay and movement is not the essence of doom, you can't even jump or aim vertically. For me Doom is a monster blast fest on easy difficulty but becomes a strategy game on the hardest ones. A game that seems hard at first but when you find and develop the best approaches it becomes easy.
I would say that Doom (1993) is one of the few games of that era still kind of holds up today, the gameplay hasn't aged poorly. Can't say the same about Wolf 3D.
Doom 2016 however made the right move. It wasn't out to replicate the old games but take the essence of it and re-imagine it in newer faster terms. It is not a sequel but something that stands next to the original. The focus is almost entirely on the fights but they are stacked that you actually have to plan your attack (figure out which enemy tier is most problematic) while in the middle of near absolute chaos. I get why people didn't like it but I thought it was such a brilliant homage to the original. The sequel, I wasn't too keen on.
