Will Doom 4 going to save FPS genre?

[Netrigan]

To understand what I'm saying, you have to look at video game skill as one who would look at work ethics. At work do you expect the same benefits as someone who has worked there for many years? Same principles, reward those who have put in the work and effort and punish those who haven't. I still complain about CoD even though I did well on it when I played it because I shouldn't be doing well until years of dedication, blood, sweat, and tears. I've seen people never play a shooter in their life get high stats on CoD and it just makes me embarrassed and honestly sickened. When back then it took so damn long to achieve victory and now people are just handed it like little pieces of candy. People have no pride or respect for those who dominated the scene. Now it's "If the game is too hard or doesn't have a matchmaking system, we don't play." You earn respect not given it for profit.

I get where you're coming from. Competitive play picks certain games for reasons. id ruled that scene for years as they took great care in balancing weapons and making sure there was a proper technical foundation. The original Unreal Tournament, which I thought was much more fun than Quake 3, did silly things like linking your mouse movement speed to your framerate, which made it functionally useless in competitive play.

But, quite frankly, most folks are just looking for a bit fun. They're not going to dedicate large chunks of their life to mastering the skills of their favorite game because they don't have the time or desire to do that. But they enjoy going on-line for an hour or two every night, trash-talking their friends & random strangers, and not worrying overly much that they're not terribly good at the game.

As I mention, I tend to be a bit of a mid-lister. Even back when I took the whole thing fairly seriously, I was just never very good at earning kills. I'm a slippery little bastard so I got a decent kill/death ratio, but it's a very, very rare thing for me to come out on the top... and if I do it's because I'm surrounded by newbies. The absolute worst thing which could ever happen to a game I was in is to have someone who took it seriously drop in, because it just becomes the Mr. Hardcore Murder Show and there's a steady stream of people dropping out of games because they're looking to play a pick-up game of hoops and some wannabe MJ shows up taking the whole thing way too seriously and killing all the fun.

Most matches I play I'm not a wannabe MJ. Personally most games I'm quiet and just focusing on doing what needs to be done to win the match. I don't trashtalk or anything like that. However; I understand what your saying. I do get annoyed when I play against someone who trash talks and just kills off the fun of the game. But trust me, I purely focus on the game itself. If I lose, it don't matter. But I do try my hardest gameplay wise to win.

I'm referring to the mismatch. If you're a semi-pro quality player, then there's not much point hopping into a corner pick-up game with a bunch of scrubs.

Trash-talking among friends is part of the fun. One of my recent experiences was in GTA Online where me a few friends were racing together and whoever wins a race gets bragging rights... until the next race. You go from hero to goat in the blink of an eye, but it's not about being The Best, it's just about getting the better of your friends for a few minutes.

Having a really good player come in throws off the dynamic in a major way as you're all frustratingly outmatched. In that particular case, he's probably just happy to find an easy environment to grind out some XP, but whenever it happened to me in Unreal Tournament it just seemed really pointless. Me and my fellow scrubs are clearly no match for the guy, so what's the appeal of our server.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I've been playing FPS games since old school, yet I really don't understand why people think health packs are better than health regen.

If playing the latest Wolfenstein taught me anything. It's that looking around for health packs all the time is just fucking annoying.

Because health packs, bonus pickups, and other finite-quantity elements require better level design to be effective.
When it works, it works great. I just finished playing through Doom 1 and 2 fully via Brutal Doom, and both the flow and tension of those games is an IMMENSE improvement over most regenerating health games I've played.

When it fails, well, you end up with the silliness of a lot of dead air spent hunting around for health.

It takes a different sort of skill to design around attrition just as it takes a different skill to play around attrition.

Thank you for a proper response.

I'm mostly a multiplayer FPS gamer, and I've found that regenerating health suits the genre better for the most part. It puts most fights on an even footing, rather than whoever has 100 points of extra shielding and armour wins.

I've heard nothing but good things about Brutal Doom, will have to check it out to see what you mean.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Thank you for a proper response.

Sure thing.

I'm mostly a multiplayer FPS gamer, and I've found that regenerating health suits the genre better for the most part. It puts most fights on an even footing, rather than whoever has 100 points of extra shielding and armour wins.

I've heard nothing but good things about Brutal Doom, will have to check it out to see what you mean.

Multiplayer does benefit from regenerating health more than single player, but mostly because those matches tend to be decisive rather than attrition oriented. Left4Dead is the only recent game that does both single and multiplayer well as a game of attrition.

For multiplayer, there are notable exceptions: Like Team Fortress 2 and most modes for Unreal Tournament 2004.

Though I will add that for UT2004, regenerating health makes the defensive style modes like CTF and Onslaught better, because it gives the flag-carrier/Capturing Team a chance survive the holding game; which is normally skewed in favor of the defender.

Before all the bots were reduced to squishy dasha-trons, HAWKEN had a pretty decent attrition-game. You could self repair at any time, but were left completely vulnerable while doing so.