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[Kazza]

“Give us more guns!” is a common battle-cry among players of first-person shooters, the videogame industry’s bloodiest genre. Doom co-creator John Romero has a rather different opinion.
“I would rather have fewer things with more meaning, than a million things you don’t identify with,” he says, sitting in a Berlin bar mocked up to resemble a 1920s Chicago speakeasy. “I would rather spend more time with a gun and make sure the gun’s design is really deep – that there’s a lot of cool stuff you learn about it.”

Modern shooters are too close to fantasy role-playing games in how they shower you with new weapons from battle to battle, Romero suggests. This abundance of loot – which reflects how blockbuster games generally have become Netflix-style services, defined by an unrelenting roll-out of “content” – means you spend as much time comparing guns in menus as savouring their capabilities. It encourages you to think of each gun as essentially disposable, like an obsolete make of smartphone. “The more weapons you throw in there, the more you’re playing an inventory game.”

Romero contrasts this to the sparing design of the original Doom, which launched in 1993 with a grand total of eight guns. “For Doom, it was really important that every time you got a new weapon, it never made any previous weapons useless. That was a critical design characteristic. We’re going to add a new thing that can’t negate anything that came before. So how do you get the chaingun and not cancel out the pistol? It’s to do with how much ammo it eats, and how inaccurate it is over distance – the pistol eats less ammo and is extremely accurate at a distance.”

Today’s shooters set less store by secret spaces, Romero says, because they cost so much to make. Where Wolfenstein 3D was created by a dozen people in a matter of months, the likes of this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is the work of hundreds, and cost tens of millions of dollars. This expense discourages designers from adding anything that isn’t absolutely essential.

Romero noticed this trend while designing 1996’s Quake, which featured more elaborate, polygon-based environments than Doom with richer, naturalistic lighting. “Doom was easy to make secret rooms for. You just drew a few lines and put a door there. It’s not even a minute. With Quake, it was a lot more work, because in Quake, every single room was made up of six planes – you have to put the floor in, the back wall, the ceiling. You have to add the light in and make sure it’s the right brightness, that it hits each corner of the room. It took a lot more work to build Quake levels, and it’s got worse from there. And because it takes so much longer, people just don’t want to do secret areas, because how many people are going to see them?”

For Romero, Sigil demonstrates that the shooters of the 90s aren’t just worth returning to, but worth building on – an idea borne out by recent, retro-themed shooters like DUSK and Amid Evil, which offer up their own, devilish twists on Doom and Quake. “Stuff that could have been done 25 years ago but was never thought of, I did with Sigil. And it’s like, yeah, this is cool. It’d be cool if more shooters had this.”

Doom creator John Romero on what's wrong with modern shooter games

The id Software founder talks about secret rooms, the value of guns and what the controversial genre has lost since the 1990s

www.theguardian.com

 

[JohnnyFootball]

I am very excited about Wrath: Aeon of Ruin



Hurry up and give us some news.

 

[Tesseract]

movement is where you want to be, slip and slide and bounce off walls, double jump and port through the floors or ceilings, conc jump through the air like a psychopath

that's the frontier

 

[The Cockatrice]

I never thought I would enjoy going back to playing classic shooters but Dusk changed my mind. Fantastic game but not all of these type of games can succeed as much as Dusk did. That reminds me I have yet to buy Ion Fury after all the outrage. Kinda forgot about it. Fucking backlogs.

 

[amigastar]

I'm still wating for Black Room by him.

 

[Kabelly]

Modern shooters [on consoles which in turn can affect the gameplay design for PC users] biggest problem is crappy stick aim. You can see how static enemies are in shooters. They'll just stand in place for a few moments so people can adjust to the target. Watching people play COD's new story mode on PC just shows how easy it is for them because the enemies combat is so limited and one dimensional.

I'll keep saying that gyro aim could change so much in gameplay design on consoles. But people don't want it and would rather enjoy being aim assisted.

Things like Doom 2016 have way more interesting enemy design but you can see how different people play on consoles vs how they play on PC. Movement and reaction time is not even close. Sunset Overdrive suffers on consoles but on PC it's like a whole different game.

 

[Northeastmonk]

I notice I ignore a gun if the damage output is lower than my current gun. Even if it’s cool. I hated this because I think I missed 60% of the appeal to Borderlands because of it. I’d say this isn’t exactly an issue in the revamp of Wolfenstein I & II. Youngblood definitely felt like it was pieced together awkwardly. I felt some sorta disconnection after playing a couple hours.

His comment about the “Netflix” style game. Call of Duty is good for a year and then the next one takes its place. It’s built to be very entertaining and it’s also very well made. I just don’t ever want to replay last year’s installment once the new game comes out. It’s like watching a Netflix show that’s good for one viewing. It isn’t a classic, but it’s not horrible either. You definitely want to go back with the next game, but you’ve basically memorized each scene from the previous installment.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

We’re going to add a new thing that can’t negate anything that came before. So how do you get the chaingun and not cancel out the pistol?

I love shooters that balance all the guns. Most of my favorites -- from Unreal Tournament to Quake to Jedi Knight II -- offered a full compliment of good guns and it was the player's job to master them.

movement is where you want to be, slip and slide and bounce off walls, double jump and port through the floors or ceilings, conc jump through the air like a psychopath

that's the frontier

Games cannot require speed from the player because that would exclude those who suck. There's a minimum "you must be this twitchy to ride" requirement for Romero's kind of games. High skill ceilings make games last longer anyway. I don't know why we accept the dumbing-down of our competitive genres.

 

[Spukc]

Lol big talk after that wank wad pack he dared to release

 

[ThatGamingDude]

High skill ceilings make games last longer anyway. I don't know why we accept the dumbing-down of our competitive genres.

We asked for it
We wanted more people to play games

If 40% of those people suck at vidya, and you want to capture as much market as you can, gotta make it to where they can play it too

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

We asked for it
We wanted more people to play games

If 40% of those people suck at vidya, and you want to capture as much market as you can, gotta make it to where they can play it too

Maybe it's a generational or cultural thing. When I'm playing something and I butt up against a difficult wall, I'm not bothered, I'm intrigued. Modern videogames are so paint-by-numbers. I do not consider myself a skilled player and I'm not aiming to master every game I play, but I do want to encounter difficulty. It typically makes the game interesting.

Even Fortnite players got angry when EPIC removed the "hastily build a structure to block the enemy's line of fire" mechanic, a feature that requires at least a tiny bit more interaction and thought than the average shooter. When Fortnite players are griping that the devs made the game too easy, there is a serious disconnect between the Industry and the customers.

 

[Lanrutcon]

He's not really wrong. I mean, in a few years: is anyone going to remember a single gun from Borderlands 3? Meanwhile, the goddamn shotguns from F.E.A.R and Doom will forever live on in infamy. Golden Eye, Halo, Modern Warfare, UT, Q3...each has its own legends.

 

[ThatGamingDude]

Maybe it's a generational or cultural thing.

Stupid isn't a generational or cultural thing, stupid people just always exist

When I'm playing something and I butt up against a difficult wall, I'm not bothered, I'm intrigued. Modern videogames are so paint-by-numbers. I do not consider myself a skilled player and I'm not aiming to master every game I play, but I do want to encounter difficulty. It typically makes the game interesting.

Yeah, but not everyone wants to overcome adversity in their free time. They should go play a different game, agreed, but eh, why not appeal to more people and throw in an easy mode?

Even Fortnite players got angry when EPIC removed the "hastily build a structure to block the enemy's line of fire" mechanic, a feature that requires at least a tiny bit more interaction and thought than the average shooter. When Fortnite players are griping that the devs made the game too easy, there is a serious disconnect between the Industry and the customers.

I don't discuss Fortnite because it's stupid so all the news and stuff around it is stupid by association; I happily ignore its existence

 

[Zelent]

I still consider classic Doom to be the best FPS, even by today's standards.

 

[mcz117chief]

Modern shooters [on consoles which in turn can affect the gameplay design for PC users] biggest problem is crappy stick aim. You can see how static enemies are in shooters. They'll just stand in place for a few moments so people can adjust to the target. Watching people play COD's new story mode on PC just shows how easy it is for them because the enemies combat is so limited and one dimensional.

I'll keep saying that gyro aim could change so much in gameplay design on consoles. But people don't want it and would rather enjoy being aim assisted.

I played MAG with gyro aim, it was pretty hellish.

 

[Fbh]

I think it was well exemplified in Shadow Warrior 2. The first one wasn't flawless but it was a fun mix of retro style design with some modern elements and presentation.
Then the second one added a hub area, quests, big open randomly designed levels, color coded loot drops, a ton of skills to upgrade, a ton of weapons, etc. And at least to me it just became a pain. It was still fun enough because the core combat remains fun but it's a game I played through once and have no desire to ever return to.

 

[BlackOlivesMatter]

Not enough Stevie "Killcreek" Case these days.....now we just have some dime a dozen Twitch Thots.

And not since John Romero, has any developer made you their bitch. Except maybe Todd Howard making Fallout 76 players his bitches

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

And not since John Romero, has any developer made you their bitch. Except maybe Todd Howard making Fallout 76 players his bitches

Due to the sexist and offensive nature of the term, they are now politely called "early adopters" instead.

 

[EightBit Man]

What it boils down to:

At least there are titles like Ion Fury, otherwise I would've left the entire genre behind.

 

[Loke]

"So how do you get the chaingun and not cancel out the pistol? It’s to do with how much ammo it eats, and how inaccurate it is over distance – the pistol eats less ammo and is extremely accurate at a distance.”

Funnily, due to a bug (?), you can actually completely negate the inaccuracy of the chaingun in Doom. Just tap the fire key instead of holding it down. You can now shoot with perfect accuracy making the pistol rather obsolete.

 

[ROMhack]

My issue with them is the lack of exploration. Certain older shooters, like Half Life, felt interesting because the gameplay was good and it was also satisfying as making your way through the world. You can find this in newer retro inspired shooters like Dusk, too. It's a free flow from start to finish.

Checkpoint shooters don't have this because they want you to experience the story -- small parts of the narrative with the whole game cut up like a movie/TV show.

Conversely I was bored rigid halfway through DOOM 2016 because of this. Good gameplay but no sense of exploration or care about its world. Happy it didn't focus on story but when it did, it was borderline dreadful really.

 

[JCK75]

What modern shooters need are Robot frogs and AI companions that block you at every move.

 

[Kabelly]

I played MAG with gyro aim, it was pretty hellish.

Sorry, I'm a little confused at your meaning lol. Like hellish as in bad?

I really want to get a PC since PS4 devs wasted the gyro this gen. I feel something like Vanquish would be awesome with mouse/gyro controls.

 

[niilokin]

I still regard Doom's action more visceral than any modern shooter's. The carnage you leave in that game is still unmatched IMO. New Doom is flashy but to me it doesn't have that same impact.

 

[small_law]

I don't disagree, but both approaches are just different expressions of player investment. It's still about balancing difficulty and reward. Better tech allows current FPS games more opportunites to do this on a much more granular level. Twenty-five years ago, the ceilings were much lower for everyone.

 

[Shifty]

I agree on the weapons, though it sounds like he's addressing looter shooters more than anything. I'd say weapon limits are the worse modern game design trope, since it means making concessions in weapon and enemy interplay because the player won't always have access to the full arsenal.

And eh, I wasn't all that impressed with Sigil. Sure, it's a good map pack, but it's still just a map pack. Not like we have any shortage of those these days, and a lot of fan-made ones target modern source ports that allow for extra functionality like rooms-over-rooms and hexen-style level scripting, as well as new enemies and weapons:




What we actually need is new oldschool shooters, like Dusk and Amid Evil.

And I don't know what he's on about with the Doom chaingun, it completely obseletes the pistol in every way. It has the same ammo efficiency, overall higher damage distribution, and even the same first-shot-is-pinpoint-accurate mechanic for long range usage.

 

[mcz117chief]

Sorry, I'm a little confused at your meaning lol. Like hellish as in bad?

I really want to get a PC since PS4 devs wasted the gyro this gen. I feel something like Vanquish would be awesome with mouse/gyro controls.

Yeah, it was pretty bad. I lacked the precision. Maybe with more training I could do ok with it but my aim was really poor. The accuracy of the gyro was very good it was definitely me who sucked.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Ion Fury made the merits of '90s shooter design crystal clear. That game was a fucking triumph. Both mechanically, and in terms of level design, it just felt so right.

 

[Tesseract]

hold onto your butts for witchfire, friendos

 

[#Phonepunk#]

Thus spake Romero

 

[a multicultural team of v]

I still consider classic Doom to be the best FPS, even by today's standards.

100% agree. It is crazy to me that it has still not been surpassed, and not because other FPS have failed but because other FPS never even tried. I don't understand why games since have just been more monsters, more guns, more sick headshots, without any care for the balance. The monsters, movement, and guns of Doom all perfectly compliment each other to the point where you are basically playing 8 dimensional rock paper scissors when you come across a diverse pack of monsters.

Quake 1 comes the closest, and in many ways equals or surpasses, but there is something about the deceptive simplicity of Doom that makes it such a treat.

 

[diffusionx]

Things like Doom 2016 have way more interesting enemy design but you can see how different people play on consoles vs how they play on PC. Movement and reaction time is not even close. Sunset Overdrive suffers on consoles but on PC it's like a whole different game.

I bought Doom on PS4 first. It was okay, but I got bored pretty quickly and didn't see the big deal. But I rebought it on PC and played it recently, and it was amazing. It was like I was playing two different games. The difference was so huge it was like playing a GB port of a SNES title back in the day. I really hope Eternal lets you plug in a mouse and keyboard, and people take advantage of it.

Sunset Overdrive is at least a game designed for the pad at least.

 

[Saber]

I agree but with something of a mixbag.

I totally agree with the point of guns. The most mediocre thing about shooters nowadays is more like a weapon collection rather than smart choices. Doom was a fantastic game because of that, every weapon has their goods and bad. Mix that with level design, different monsters(and their behaviours) and ammunition conserving makes for a real "use your brain before you shoot". Also, the map style of gameplay from Doom is something that brainless people can't really understand, since they just like to move foward with checkpoints and cutscenes all over the game.

But one thing that I totally disagree is the point where he mentions the pistol. In Doom 1&2 PC, the pistol is a terrible weapon and pretty much no one uses unless they are starting with it. Chaingun is a better and more suitable weapon that acts way better than the pistol(even though share the same damage), not to mention it can compesate the spread accuracy by shooting in low bursts(which makes it perfect for long ranged combats). It's a different case from Shotgun and Double-shot gun where the 2 can co-exists with no problems.

 

[EightBit Man]

I think it was well exemplified in Shadow Warrior 2. The first one wasn't flawless but it was a fun mix of retro style design with some modern elements and presentation.

Yeah, these were good games. The 2013 Rise of the Triad was also very solid I think.

 

[Virex]

I like John Romero but does John have memory loss? Did he forget about a certain game that wanted to make us his bitch?

 

[O-N-E]

More things like Bulletstorm, please.

That felt like dude-humor Ratchet and Clank and I was alright with it.

 

[nkarafo]

Another proper thread for me to say how i miss the DOOM/Quake school of level design and atmosphere. Give me complex, elaborate maps to explore and secrets to find. And a spooky setting. Just re-played DOOM 64 and enjoyed it way more than any modern shooter. Even after clearing all the monsters in a map i still find it enjoyable to wander around like an idiot trying to find any secrets i missed.

 

[TylersProphecy4.0]

I went back and played duke nukem 3d recently after almost 25 years of just dicking with the first level and yeah, hes not wrong.

The emphasis on exploration/ammo management is real and it's amazing hardly anyone outside of indie makes games like this anymore. They have a real appeal that kinda just evaporated, not because the audience didnt want it but because the devs didnt want to or didnt see the profit in it. Feels kind of like what happened to arcadey racing games also.

 

[ZywyPL]

I have to strongly disagree with him - the lack of content, specifically the guns, was the main issue with many many 1st and 3rd person shooters released in the past decade, even (or should I say especially) in gameplay masterpieces like Titanfall or modern Doom, you just can play with a certain weapon only for so long, no matter how good it is. Back in the Q3A vs UT days me and all my friends preferred the latter, solely because of guns, which not only felt better in their primary mode IMO, but because they had a secondary mode in the first place, you basically had double the amount of guns, double the fun. Let's take a shotty as an example - one shotty simply won't cut it, some people prefer double-barrel sawed-off ones, others prefer pump-action ones, some prefer semi-auto, and there's a group who adores spraying full-auto shottys, you simply cannot please everyone with just one product. If you make just one type of a gun, let's say a pistol, there's a big chance nobody will like it at all, but if you give people 3, 4 or 5 pistols to choose from, it's way more likely that everyone will find something for themselves.

As for the secrets, do they bring ANYTHING to the game at all? Take Doom Marine doll for example - it's fun for the first, I don't know, 4, 5 times maybe? But then you wonder why the hell I'm wasting so much time here instead of rushing into another group of deamons? Walking alone in a dead silent area for something literally symbolical is not what will get people hooked into the game, especially as he said, it costs millions, MILLIONS. And if the enemies respawn every time you go back to an area it's even worse, because I'm always like "where the hell did they come from?!? I just killed every living being in 10 mile radius FFS!!". There's almost always no logical explanation of their appearance, like you're on a space station with 10 guys in it, you kill them all, but eventually another 150 respawn if you keep revisiting the areas, it's stupid as fuck.

Variety of content is the key to success nowadays, usually the more weapons cars, characters, levels, areas, enemies, bosses etc. the is the better the game.

 

[Stuart360]

 

[Knightime_X]

Give the player OP weapons.
Then challenge said OP weapons with dangerous enemies.
....like doom 2.
And yet so many games faceplant in recreating this level of fun.

 

[LazyParrot]

He's not wrong about Doom having great weapons, but I'm not sure to what extent he is actually responsible for that, considering how Daikatana has more weapons than any other non-looter shooter I know, and almost all of them are absolutely terrible.

 

[Wonko_C]

This is why I find Borderlands 3 a chore. I spend literal hours comparing weapons in a menu and their differences are minor in the end. Minutes later you find a dozen higher level weapons and repeat the whole process. I feel like I'm spending more time in menus than in combat. Feels like work at that point.

 

[Tesseract]

the way a weapon feels is just as important in many cases more so than its utility

doom's shotgun is still taking people to school

 

[EverydayBeast]

What I like about modern shooters are gamers are having fun with them, developers pass on doom-arena-shooter like decisions all the time, doom and quake were products of their era.

 

[The Pleasure]

He's not really wrong. I mean, in a few years: is anyone going to remember Borderlands 3?

There i fixed it for you.

 

[EightBit Man]

I still consider classic Doom to be the best FPS, even by today's standards.

Though I am fond of a lot of other titles of that era, I'd probably second that. It was the first game I bought for my PC back in the mid-90s (The Ultimate DOOM on CD-ROM), so it has a very special place. Think it still holds up well, natively in MS-DOS. The music, the level design, the lighting, the atmosphere, the satisfying weapons, the tons of secrets, the feeling of isolation, the dark humor... Hell, even the manual was delightful to read through.

 

[Kabelly]

Yeah, it was pretty bad. I lacked the precision. Maybe with more training I could do ok with it but my aim was really poor. The accuracy of the gyro was very good it was definitely me who sucked.

Gyro aim definitely does take a bit of adjusting especially if you're used to a certain control scheme but it's definitely doable!

 

[anab0lic36]

Modern shooters [on consoles which in turn can affect the gameplay design for PC users] biggest problem is crappy stick aim. You can see how static enemies are in shooters. They'll just stand in place for a few moments so people can adjust to the target. Watching people play COD's new story mode on PC just shows how easy it is for them because the enemies combat is so limited and one dimensional.

I'll keep saying that gyro aim could change so much in gameplay design on consoles. But people don't want it and would rather enjoy being aim assisted.

Things like Doom 2016 have way more interesting enemy design but you can see how different people play on consoles vs how they play on PC. Movement and reaction time is not even close. Sunset Overdrive suffers on consoles but on PC it's like a whole different game.

This is the precisely the problem I have with nearly all FPS games these days and why I haven't really enjoyed any since Half life 2. When you design the game around the limitations of an analogue stick for aim, you have to make is so that the enemys are slow and easy to hit etc...then when you play the game on PC, with faster and more precise aim input, the game lacks challenge to the point where its just not interesting. I'd love to see more single player fps games that are PC only and really test your reactions and aim precision skills, that only a mouse and keyboard setup can accommodate

 

[Ballthyrm]

The problem is not really what shooting with but what you are shooting at.
Also were you are getting shot from.

The utter mindlessness and utter lack of diversity from most enemies make encounters dull-minded.
They all get freaking rifles and shot at you behind cover, how grand.
Once in a while they throw grenades, beware !

There is almost no player agency.

None with the weapons you can choose from.
None with the paths you can take.
None with the targeting priority.

There is soooo many levers designers can pull but none of them get used.
All we get is hit scan weapons with a damage numbers attached to them.

Here is your 47 dmg rifle, enjoy. Can't wait for the 51 dmg ....