they might be able to apologize for the crap that was Doom3. Doom3 could have been great, but they made some stupid gameplay decisions. Here's what they should change, imo (many repeats):

-any activity monsters do should be ingame (not a cutscene) and in general this should be kept to a minimum
-AI that isn't shit.
-Similar art style would be OK, but, LESS REPETITIVE, more maps in Hell (come on this is DOOM!), and don't use ridiculously distinct monsters (a commando with a tentacle on his left arm). Infact most Doom3 monsters were shit.
-Level design. To me this was the hugest flaw in Doom3. Some of the maps looked decent some of the time, what you could see of them, but the maps were almost all tiny corridors - no joke, the layouts of these maps could almost all be remade in Doom1, albeit with sector-over-sector (like in Duke3d). What they need, is maps like Q2 Warehouse, but darker, with prowling monsters, forcing the player to behave intelligently and attack stealthily to make it through the environment alive.

-Cut the story. Come up with something vague and spooky, and leave it at that.

Fuck gameplay quirks like NPC's you protect, no duct tape, and so forth.

Coop could be great with large, nonlinear levels. 

even Doom 1 had warehouses full of prowling monsters :) I think some of the early ep 2 maps had areas where if you fired your gun, loads of monsters woke up and started prowling around. Because the AI was very simple (walk towards player, if hit wall walk along wall for a bit, try and walk towards player...) if you couldn't get to the monsters straight away, they would often end up in very unpredictable places and scare the hell out of you. I didn't notice this at all in Doom 3 - possibly because there was actual pathfinding.

I thought the commando was better than the z-sector marines at least. It did seem a bit distinct perhaps, but at least it looked tougher than the regular zombies and was very aggressive.

The hell-knights, manacubuses, arch-viles and other high end monsters needed a bit more use. There was too much repetition of the trite ambushes and those invisible things. I would have also liked to see more use of the chainsaw wielding zombies. Also, I had no idea until after I had finished the game that the spiders and trites were not the same enemy, and the cherubs were too similar in function to them too. 

Probably agree with everyone.

I liked Doom3, thought it was a good game, had a good time playing it, proper scary in some places. But, it's been done. Don't really think it needs revisiting and it doesn't excite me as much as it could.

Quake V i.e. Quake update would be much more welcome, even if they gheyify it as would be expected. At least it would be a fresh revamp.

Quake 4 did a pretty good job of updating Quake 2... 

Doom3 was pretty weak IMO. I didn't even bother trying to finish it.

I hope they step up the design somewhat this time. 

Had only 2 serious flaws:

1) Monsters spawning behind your back / from a closet got old really fast.
2) They really should've shipped the game with the "ducttape" MOD built-in.

After you install the ducttape mod which solves the problems with infuriating completely pitch black areas of the game, it actually becomes really good. Additionally, Doom3 is really one of those titles that becomes a completely different game once you get a PC capable of running it on high settings. Back when it was released, I had to play it on 800x600 medium quality at low framerate and although I found it interesting, it was nothing too special. When I replayed it in 1600x1200 Ultra Quality though, it was a whole different game: moody, ambient, scary and beautiful. 

so whats a shooter in its basic?
aim, dodge, explore. manage your resources, use tactics (some shooter have that yeah)

where doom3 fails

aim: cant see shit!
and I mean it, in the time when you neeed it - during the combat. It not just dark. Excessive effects (like a thick chimney smoke) from all the weapons and monster projectiles. Excessive damage feedback - blood splat, view bluring and the ridiculous owl-neck shit (you better set g_kickime 0 to disable it if you want to enjoy the game at all) Combine all theses and you literary dont see where to shoot. jagos` mod wouldnt help much.

dodge: slow speed, low stamina, yeah they wanted horror and what-not, but it feels more like an annoyance. Sometimes you just have to sit and wait for the stamina to refill before engaging into a new area for a fight - no fun.
And lots of bullet-firing monsters which are very hard to dodge (doom3 bullets are _almost_ insta-hit) -no fun either.

explore: exploring the cramped dark claustrophobic levels is not much fun, no matter how detailed they are. An extra room here, a healthpack-reward under the stairs there... thats what doom3 exploration is all about. But lets admit _some_ levels were ok, and offered backtracking and 'secrets'. But time-limits in outdoors? plz ;(

resources: ammo was in abundance, armor? - usless on on the hard level (it only takes like 15% damage? - I never ran lower than 100 armor). Health was fine on hard. But how do you even expect to have a horror game with so much excessive ammo? And the leveldesign is a joke with the armomr/ammo trigerring monster teleports just making you avoid picking the usless items.

tactics hmm, hard one... no particular weapon specifications (no "hard" counters, like they say in RTS, where each weapon is most effective agains different monsters). unpredictable bouncy grenades, sg for close, rl for long, the rest is quite universal.
Monsters have rather distinctive patterns, and are very simple to fight, except the chaingun-guys but they are an annoyance, cause you cant dodge. Lets say human enemies are not very good by design and use in the levels too.

Now come on guys, help me here - did doom3 employ any use of tactics anywhere, cause I cant recall it all. Or was it just "come closer - SSG in your face imp!", "backpedal firing plasma somwhere into the effects-cluttered screen" and "watch your back for the surprise(oh not again!)spawns" 

...Who didn't find it that dark? I mean it was definitely dark, but almost never did it matter, as rarely was there a monster in it (when there was, it was a zombie - illuminate them with the flashlight, put your reticle on their head, switch to pistol, click twice, move on). The only times I saw particularly dark areas, they gave you some form of light (a light source to follow, or one of those oddly adorable spider robots).

I am not opposed to being able to have a flashlight and a gun out, I just never found myself wishing I could have both. Probably because I never ever ONCE felt threatened when I was standing still, because danger was only posed by crossing a threshold or picking up armor (I swear, armor must be the secret gateways to Hell).

So yeah, it would need good coop support, interesting ai, interesting enemies, and perhaps level design this time.

than - I liked the Z-Sec, they didn't just charge me... Commandos? A bit boring. Straight line charge, just like a zombie only quicker... I hated the whip though, numerous times I would sprint out of its way, and it would still hit me - and I could see it clipping through brushes to do so.

Unless id has changed their form, a lot, I really don't want them doing a Quake sequel to be honest... 

Oh fuck yes, how did I manage to forget about this. When I was playing Doom3 for the first time on a slow PC, the shaking screen and the enormous "slash marks" on my screen made me die many many times just because I couldn't aim worth shit with my screen going completely bananas. When I later discovered the console commands for toning that shit down it made the game a lot more enjoyable.

Actually UT3 suffers from the same problem, with default configuration, the damage feedback is way too excessive and when you are playing againt people who aren't completely retarded, you can pretty much give up as soon as someone starts hitting you with the Link Gun altfire, just because your screen will be too fucked up for you to be able to fight back. Thankfully, UT3 also allows near-complete removal of this bullshit via editing of the .ini configuration files.

Whats this stupid trend all about anyway? 

I assume Rage isn't erased, just that id is doing both games at the same time, which is fine.

I also assume that Doom4 will be more of the same with better graphics, while Rage seems to be a new direction for id (but I don't like the direction.)

For both games, we can expect post-apocalyptic themes with pretty generic, yet super polished, details (pipes, crates, etc.)

If they ever did a proper Quake 1 sequel (Castle Shambler mod for Doom3 came pretty close to what I'd imagine it'd be like) I might get a teensy-bit excited. But right now, there's no reason to be based solely off an announcement. 

In my opinion, Doom4 should be exactly 1 level long; a large empty box, with 50 rocket launchers in it, and the Spider Mastermind. 

...Who didn't find it that dark? I mean it was definitely dark, but almost never did it matter, as rarely was there a monster in it (when there was, it was a zombie - illuminate them with the flashlight, put your reticle on their head, switch to pistol, click twice, move on). The only times I saw particularly dark areas, they gave you some form of light (a light source to follow, or one of those oddly adorable spider robots).

Thank you, that was exactly what I was about to say. I found that the darkness interfered with the combat a grand total of one time for me - where you meet a revenant at close quarters coming down the stairs in a small dark room. Can't remember which level it was on. The only other times they mixed darkness with combat was, as you say, using slow zombies that gave you ample time to target, switch to gun, then shoot.

That section in Half-Life Episode 1 where you are stuck in a pitch black room waiting for an elevator and there are fast zombies and zombine continually spawning and throwing grenades at you and your fucking flashlight keeps running out was a million times more annoying than any time Doom 3 mixed darkness and combat.

And just before I get lynched for defending it, I just want to make it clear that I agree we don't need that sort of darkness in Doom 4. It's been done.

Everyone else complains about blur and owl-neck damage feedback, and I can sort of see where they're coming from, but at the end of the day the combat was so godpiss easy anyway that I was never bothered by it.

Personally, I'd like to see better weapon feedback (the machinegun and rocket launcher in particular felt really flimsy and fake). I'd like them to ditch the utterly retarded 80s-heavy-metal-tshirt visual design that some of the enemies had (lost souls, revenants etc.) Also, zombies are boring and don't interest me. While they're at it, let's get some variation in the environments, and some nice outdoor areas please, with no stupid oxygen depletion bullshit.

And of course do Hell properly, i.e. don't just do one level consisting of a string of small rooms, each with a lame scripted sequence showing some stones moving around. Hell can look beautiful yet incredibly sorrowful at the same time - just look at any of Beksinski's work.

Please. drop the shitty 13-year-old-Iron-Maiden-fan version of hell with fleshy anus-tubes and goat horns sticking randomly out of brick walls. It's crap. 

Isn't your point of view a little bit simplistic ?
;P 

at section in Half-Life Episode 1 where you are stuck in a pitch black room waiting for an elevator and there are fast zombies and zombine


ha. that was incredibly BAD
worst design in any HL and one of worst in any game ever. Cause there is that dumb NPC - alyx - which you need to babysit in that freaking darkness. and she kept on dying

darkness on its own is not the worst thing about d3, its the overall combination of all the effects that obscure your view 

Alyx died? She's invulnerable is she not? 

I thought that part of episode 1 was fantastic. Probably the most frenetic and suspenseful part of the game, definitely a highlight that I remember. 

she died on me once in city 17. it was game over (as if the player had died). and i agree with zwiffle, i fucking loved that part =) 

RE: excessive damage feedback.

Whats this stupid trend all about anyway?

Dunno, but on a related note, in addition to yanking your view around with every little movement, I hope they don't get onboard this recent obsession with fucking with your FOV every time you do something other than stand still.

Every time I see a trailer for the latest generic FPS, I see them trying to outdo each other by making your FOV fishbowl all over the place when you run, or shrink when you take damage or shoot your gun. The problem is that when you are moving at a constant speed but your FOV changes, you get this horrible car-sickness inducing "crazy-mirrors" effect where the natural effect of the scenery approaching clashes with the changing FOV and everything goes all sort of wibbly-wobbly. Can't stand it, and it is not realistic in any way, unlike say, viewbob - which I can tolerate. 

I just can't. Anytime id software announce anything I get giddy like a schoolgirl.

I thought doom 3 was pretty disappointing though. And I don't know how they could go in much of a different direction for this...

I'm not a fan of the demonic style. It worked in the original doom because it was a lot more cartoony, but in a realistic, serious game, no thanks. For me, Lovecraftyness in games = scary, general creepy weirdness a la Silent Hill = scary, demonic goats heads and fire and brimstone = not scary at all.

The atmosphere was great in Doom 3 despite that though, probably because of the lighting.

I'm guessing in Doom 4 they're going to do all the things they couldn't do technically at the time of doom 3, like having more than a few lights, more than a few monsters in a room, proper outdoor areas and all that. Hopefully they'll take it a bit further though. 

http://quotes.fov120.com/?show=single&quote=71755 

Also, I just realised this is being developed "in-house". That really surprises me. I wonder for what reason they have decided to dredge up a stale franchise and do it in-house rather than sponge it off to some other developer like they always do with anything that's not their primary project....? 

I agree with starbuck's point.

Cheesy EVIL WITH LAVA AND SKULLS worked fine for the original Doom, and it worked fine in Quake3 (Temple of Retribution, for example). It's only when they tried to put that style in a "realistic" setting, like in Doom3, that it bogged down.

Some of the flesh parts were cool, but Doom3's hell was crap.

I think the whole problem with a hellish environment, is that it can never be as scary as areas with _hints_ of hell. Still, they should have had at least 10 maps in Hell, and just not tried to take it so seriously. Q3 style would have been fine.

It would have been kinda cool if they tried to do something based on Dante. It might be cheesy, but if done right all those tortures WOULD get disturbing. 

Maybe that's the hook. Maybe they're getting excited about doing Doom 4 because it's going to be the anti-Doom3 - i.e. it mostly takes place in Hell, and the human environments are secondary this time.

One can only hope. 

Doom 4: Hell on Earth 

Maybe that's the hook. Maybe they're getting excited about doing Doom 4 because it's going to be the anti-Doom3

The Id crew knows that Doom3 was a let down, and it is probably a sore spot for them until a proper version of the game can be done.

Doom 3 has been analyzed to death by all of us but for me it comes down to factors: The first several hours of game play scared the living shit out of me, and after those first few hours, it became too repetitive to thrill. I spent at least the last half of playing it just trying to get though with the game.

I hope they do get rid of most of the story element, but not all of it. Get rid of the cartoon villains that snicker and fold their hands together menacingly. Keep that aspect ambiguous and hallucinogenic, and therefore more real like a really bad day at the office.

The way I would approach story line would be to make it not too relevant to actually solving the game, but at the same time, if the player is the exploring type who has to know and see everything, he can uncover the underlying threads that would remain hidden if he were to take an approach that was more action oriented. Doom meets Lost. 

I vote you to lead Doom 4!

I just checked out that Beksinski guy and his work is amazing. If id made hell look more like that or Giger's Shaft cartoons I would fucking cum. Whatever though, they need more mature art direction this time around.

http://www.gnosis.art.pl/iluminatornia/sztuka_o_inspiracji/zdzislaw_beksinski/zdzislaw_beksinski.htm

http://www.beksinski.pl/