rant enough? 

I want more! If it includes a discussion of how Id underappreciated the brilliance of American McGee and their SP game play has been souless and mal-directed ever since, I'll sign up for your blog. 

more praise of AM!

Anyway. I also read Lun's update and felt that it had the most balanced and interesting opinion about D3 so far; most else I've heard is either unconstructively glowing praise or uptight nitpicking - both of which may be entirely valid.
But I can well imagine the gameplay trick that, to quote the unibrowed-one "this game beats to death".
This is less to do with monster design and more to do with map design i.e. what monsters are used, where and - most importantly I feel - in what combinations.
Being harrassed by multiple small/weak/fast monsters while one larger-but-slow-moving monster lumbers towards you can be cool. It can induce a sense of panic, even though player-death is actually a long way off. Cacking on the player without any possible means to detect, avoid or at least retaliate against the attack, closely followed by an 3v3n m34n4r m0nst4r is simply using the game as a mechanism to bludgeon player's into submission before the designer's awesome poly-pushing achievements.
I don't know if D3 really is like this all of the time, or most of the time, or some of the time. But I know both pro and amateur designers are guilty of it often enough.

Trying not to give anything away, necros and I have been dealing with these issues extensively for the last few weeks. A lot of this issue relates to the older thread Shamb started: How Hard Is Too Hard. And I reiterate the comments I made then.
The important thing that must remain, however 'challenging' you intend your SP experience to be, is the number of options available to the player. The speed at which they have to deal with a threat can increase, the severity of the penalties if they fuck up can also increase. But the player must always have multiple options as to how to act and react. Telespawning the largest monster you can fit in the corridor immediately behind the player when they're already suffering does not leave them a lot of options :P Severe damage is inevitable, as is the inability to retaliate for a predetermined number of seconds. That's not a game, that's a 3D movie.

I have more to say on this I'm sure, but for the moment I have mappage to map.
It 

I think a good test of any "eek" moment in any context -- film, book, yes, even computer game -- is that when you come across it the second time you go "wow, yes, I should have seen that coming".

Kinda like Sixth Sense (although, I figured that one out the first time through) or Iain M Banks' Use of Weapons (the end of which I certainly didn't see coming).

I have no experience of level design, but I can well believe that this is pretty hard to pull off... 

Kiltron's Trite Breeding Facility. I didn't get very far through it, but the flaming skulls at the beginning are fun, and the fight with the 2 mancubi felt really oldschool. I think that map beat the pants off of doom as far as plain old gameplay is concerned.

But trite wasn't trying to propel much of a story. 

Throwing a few suprises to keep the player on his toes is good, as long as the player has a fighting chance, but what really works -- and DaMaul did this a few times in Beastial Devestation, is to draw the player into a trap and fuck him over in slow motion.

If it is good, the player will salute you while he is sinking into the lava, 'bravo, you magnificent, level design god bastard, -aiiee!!.' 

All the moaning about surprise attacks behind doors, monsters jumping out and appearing behind you and whatever...

Well. It is cheap in some places, but bear this in mind:

1. It's still pretty easy on Medium. They don't do much damage at all and there's plenty of health and armour around. So you get unavoidably hit a few times, in the end it hardly affects the gameplay.

2. It doesn't happen that often. Really. You tend to remember it because it's a bit more memorably and "surprising", but it's very rare that it's an "unavoidable" shot in the way people are pretending.

3. I think some of the cheap shots can be outwitted anyway. Imps jumping behind doors?? Learn to dodge, duck, or shoot straight away. Monsters appearing behind you?? Check your fucking six, marine. So this makes you more tense and panicked, shooting at shit and glancing around?? That's how it's supposed to be... 

Let me say first that from an actual art perspective I think id did a fantastic job with the enemies in Doom 3. The each move fluidly, sound great, and look menacing.

The issue for many is how they are utilized within the game structure. During the first few levels you are subjected to many attacks upon opening the door. The prone imp attack I thought was excuted well for the most part. It only happened a few times that I remember and it never damaged me enough that it was an issue. On Marine setting, as Shambler pointed out, the game is probably too easy and id could afford those "cheap shots" for some surprise.

The issue I ran into time after time was the reward system for fighting monsters. Through out each map there is always a situation where some health and ammo are laying about, and if you retrieve them you are given an imp from behind to deal with. Or an imp is revealed from a door in the wall. Here these cheap tricks ran thin on me because you were never rewarded beyond that.

One example I can think of specifically is in the Alpha labs. You enter a room with a ledge, a ZSec solider runs arross the opposite side of the room, hides behind a box near a barrel and proceeds to use it's machine to try to pin you down. Mean while a room is revealed with a imp and marine to your left. After destroying him, and clearing out that storage room, if you look over the edge of the ledge you see a piece of armor on a catwalk. I knew if I went and got that armor something would happen, and it did. An imp attacks me just as I pick up the armour. The situation was easy enough, and I wasn't damaged but those things kept happening to the point sometimes I just wouldn't pick up stuff. I've read other people doing that as well.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the actual design of the game doesn't give enough rewards for those cheap encounters all the time. Had I been able to gotten that armor then been forced to take another route it would of broken up the linear structure of the level and been welcomed. Remember there is no monster count at the end of each level so you can afford to have monster's in different sections of maps and not disapoint people. It creates replay value really.

Those complaints of monsters spawning behind you though is more complicated. Sham points out well that the intent was to make you question your surroundings, even rooms you thought you cleared out. I personally never had an issue with them cause I could always hear them behind me. But that is just the issue, not everyone has a 5.1 surround sound setup for their computer. I truely believe this gives those with 2.1s a severe disadvantage and would generally piss those people off.

I know I'm rambling but it's really hard just to say the monster design in Doom 3 specifically is bad. I think it is flawed in some respects, and made worse in a few situations when you are just rewarded with more of the same. I am replaying the game now on the Veteran setting and enjoying the game a lot more. The enemies aren't any faster, and there only might be a few extra monsters in each map. What makes the difference is how much damage they inflict. It really give you a sense of your mortality in the world and makes for a much more tense experience.

Finally as far as the actual screen distortion when being attacked I think it is a great design choice. Without it, those zombie's wouldn't carry near as much weight to the experience. I mean if you get a bite taken out of you by a pinky, there should be some repercussions for letting that happen.

In the end though I think the problems with the foes in Doom 3 are how they were utilized as I said before. As more custom maps come out I think we'll see more varied use and some of these complaints will be forgotten.

Anyways I'll stop here cause I'm sure most of you didn't read this anyways and this is just a jummbled mess of thoughts. Hope someone took something from this post. 

People afraid of spoilers have probably long since stopped watching this thread though.

While we're talking about cheap shots, has anyone else noticed that you never get attacked while climbing up a ladder or crawling through a vent. The former is definitely a good thing since you can't even look behind you while on the ladder. I don't know about the latter though. It would have been cool to have hordes of small and none-too-damaging vent monsters. Would have been a great change from the mono-e-mono style which is most of the game.

Also, I didn't have a problem with getting attacked from behind. I do have a 5.1 setup. I don't think that's a coincidence. There's a certain point where you stop supporting old technology though. Hell, you'll soon be able to buy mobos with onboard 7.1. 

Wasn't really a problem for me either, but I'm only playing on a 2.1 setup (I own a 5.1 system, but no space to set up the rear speakers). There is always some sort of 'cue' when monsters spawn in. The screen shakes, it plays a sound, and if you're standing on the actual spawn location you get damaged a bit and tossed away. If any of these things happened and I didnt' see what spawned, I strafed, turned around and looked for enemies. That trick did have me checking my back often though.

The screen effect when you get hit? Not an issue, really. The only time it really started to 'interfere' with my killing was when I was cornered by 3 or more monsters. Otherwise, I would take the hit, stop firing, and wait till I could line up a shot again, because you almost always get enough time to line up a shot in between hits. Then, the shotgun usually took care of whatever was nibbling on my ankles. All in all, it seems like a good gimmick to have, because it sure as hell kept me from letting those things get anywhere near me if I could help it. 

that ticked me off a bit, because mid way through, i figured it out and then the vents just weren't fun anymore because all the suspense and scariness was gone... 

1. It's still pretty easy on Medium. They don't do much damage at all and there's plenty of health and armour around. So you get unavoidably hit a few times, in the end it hardly affects the gameplay.

Oh, it does though. Sure, its pretty easy - I played on the medium setting and rarely even had to pick up armour jackets as I often seemed to have at least 90 armour when I encountered them... and of course I'd soon worked out that picking up item = cheap monster spawn trigger bollocks.

Its not the difficulty that's the problem though. Its the feeling that there was nothing you could do to avoid getting hit by some monster that spawned behind you/next to you while you're distracted and whacks you in the back of the head before you even know they're there.

In a world like Doom3 the player should feel powerful, or at the very least capable of dealing with most scenarios that you encounter. The way they spawned in monsters all the time made me feel somewhat powerless and not in control of my destiny in the game world: I had no ability to reasonably predict or avoid a lot of the cheap shots, and my only option was to quicksave/quickload often. Thereby breaking the immersion and the fun.

2. It doesn't happen that often. Really. You tend to remember it because it's a bit more memorably and "surprising", but it's very rare that it's an "unavoidable" shot in the way people are pretending.

It does though. Perhaps you didn't notice because it didn't irritate you as much as it did me. But they constantly spawn monsters behind you and beside you, and often do it seemingly soundlessly (or at least while you've got other sounds and monsters distracting you). So the first indication you have that there's an enemy behind you is when you get clobbered by it.

It gets worse the further the game progresses, too (so perhaps that's another reason you haven't noticed it as much yet, Shambler, if you have not finished it yet). Not only do they start doing it more often towards the end of the game, but you as a player obviously become more aware of it the more it happens, and start to expect it.

And that's when it gets really irritating... when you know they're going to spawn monsters behind you... when you know as you walk in a doorway there will be monsters spawning behind you... when you know that and you try to counter it by running through doors and quickly try to turn around immediately to face the inevitable cheaply spawned enemy... and yet you still get unavoidably hit, either because it just happens too damn fast to react properly, or you get hit once and then your view goes spaz and you're powerless to react properly.

It got to the point where towards the end of the game, I'd quickload in the same spot 5-10 times sometimes just to try to finally avoid getting hit from behind by yet another fucking cheap shot which was all but impossible to avoid. Or at least reduce the damage taken from that annoying encounter. It was spoiling the game for me... and sure, I was spoiling the game for myself, too... but I just could not accept getting hit and losing half my health just because some asshole designer spawns enemies in really annoying spots all the time. Its not fun, its not scary, after the 9999999th time, its just fucked.

Its not even about it being too hard or whatever... the game really was too easy on the medium setting, and getting hit often only took away 5 health or something. That's really not the point. Its the principle of the thing. If I was taking hits from something I didn't see, could not have reasonably predicted and was extremely difficult to avoid, then I'd get incredibly pissed off. What's the point of playing if you can't influence the outcome of situations like monster encounters? So I'd save all the time, and if I got hit by some cheapss spawning tactics, I'd reload and try to eliminate or reduce the amount of damage taken. If it didn't work I'd do it again... and again... and again... until I avoided getting hit, or at least minimised the health reduction. Again, I did that not because it was too hard otherwise, but because I simply could not and would not accept getting hurt by such lame tactics. 

in the Caverns level, while riding the Akira freight elevator down, did anyone else keep expecting to see headcrabs come sliding down from above? I kept turning around thinking something MUST be coming, since that scene in Half Life was so ingrained in my mind. 

Albeit somewhat easier than usual because you're wrong =).

In a world like Doom3 the player should feel powerful, or at the very least capable of dealing with most scenarios that you encounter. The way they spawned in monsters all the time made me feel somewhat powerless and not in control of my destiny in the game world:

No shit Sherlock. Ever thought that's how it's supposed to be?? That you're not supposed to be an omnipotent superhuman rampaging through the base in total control of what's going on?? That you're supposed to feel intimidated, out of control, nervous, unsure what's going on?? That you're a hero not by virtue of being powerful but being a survivor in a situation where you're well out of your depth??

It does though. Perhaps you didn't notice because it didn't irritate you as much as it did me. But they constantly spawn monsters behind you and beside you, and often do it seemingly soundlessly (or at least while you've got other sounds and monsters distracting you). So the first indication you have that there's an enemy behind you is when you get clobbered by it.

Ballsac. I'm taking an objective view on it because my perspective isn't tainted by being irritated. Anyway - the monsters make sounds, their appearance makes sounds. Okay you get clobbered sometimes, but a lot of the time it's avoidable if you're playing with care. I open doors from the side, I keep spinning around me before and after most combats. Do I feel "this is tedious there's bound to be some lame trick here"?? No, I feel nervous and on edge and that I have to continually watch my back (not for fear of dying but for fear of attack). I think that's how it's supposed to be.

BTW, are you playing with mouselook on??

Again, I did that not because it was too hard otherwise, but because I simply could not and would not accept getting hurt by such lame tactics.

Oh boo hoo. So you have to get hurt sometimes. You're on a base that's being overrun by the hordes of hell FFS - they have bestial cunning and the guidance of a malicious intelligence. They're going to lurk, they're going to appear behind you. What do you want, a nice shooting gallery of all the monsters ahead of you (perhaps facing the opposite way, just in case)??



I'm not an evanglist for the gameplay, I'm not saying it's revolutionary or mind-blowing or flawless, I'm not claiming some of the cheap shots aren't a bit boring. What I am saying is that a lot of people moaning about them are quite wide of the mark and not thinking about the overall effect of that gameplay mechanic. 

The "Monsters lurking in some random unexplained cabinet or box waiting to get you when you pick up an item" issue.

This is something I think that is a bit different to the normal "shock" mechanic and doesn't fit into what I've written above. It took me a little while to realise that it's a direct tribute to the original Dooms. Whether the nostalgia of that link is enough to compensate for it's artificial feel is open to debate. But at least it has some reason behind it. 

Isn't this a matter of what people want from the gameplay mechanic?

Focusing on the unavoidable damage, it's a trade-off between negating the players skill and bumping up the atmosphere. Whether it's a good choice depends on whether you prefer skill or atmosphere. Oui? 

... to have both skill and atmosphere... This is the "trademark" of best maps...;) 

Yes...I was checking both up and down looking for stuff to come flying at me. 

When I first started playing Doom 3, I was too impressed by all the graphical goodness going on around me to care about the gameplay that much. Later on, as the thrill of the shadows and bumpmapping wore off, I started to notice how old skool the game is.

At first, I did think that perhaps the monster spawn on ammo pickup and walls opening up, revealing monsters several times were a tribute to the original Doom, as Shambler mentioned. Later on, however, I began to think that perhaps id just didn't have any better ideas, and wanted to compensate for the decrease in difficulty from having 20 monsters attacking at once, to around 6 maximum.

I found that the fact that the gameplay was such a throwback detracted from the imersiveness that id so obviously wanted to give to the game. Finding monsters standing around in dark waiting for me to walk in front of them made remember that I was just playing a game, and that the monsters had been placed by id. Very rarely did I feel that I was on a Mars base being overrun by demons.

I felt that the game was flawed because it wasn't often that I was given the impression that monsters were running around in the air ducts around me, or breaking in through the walls, because they were introduced in these way so rarely. On just a handful of occasions did an imp clamber down from a darkened spot on the ceiling in front of me, or pinky smash through something to get to me. Almost every other time the enemies just spawned in, or a door opened up.

The trites, on the other hand, very rarely spawned in, they crawled out from under machinery, from vents and dropped down from the ceiling. The trites, did, very frequently, scare the shit out of me. Still, I felt that the trites were not used well in many situations. I usually just heard one spawn, located it, and found a safe spot away from the obvious grates were I could easily pick them off as the hobbled toward me.

I felt the accuracy of the chaingun guys was slightly unfair. There was one at the bottom of the big lift in the caverns that seemed to devastate me even though he was a long way off. The chaingunners take a lot of damage to kill and can shoot down rockets fairly easily, so I felt kind of trapped without much cover (I used the lift activation panel) and unable to retaliate without getting hit.

Still, I enjoyed the game generally and didn't feel too let down by it, despite my high expectations. 

I felt that the game was flawed because it wasn't often that I was given the impression that monsters were running around in the air ducts around me, or breaking in through the walls, because they were introduced in these way so rarely. On just a handful of occasions did an imp clamber down from a darkened spot on the ceiling in front of me, or pinky smash through something to get to me. Almost every other time the enemies just spawned in, or a door opened up.

I agree with that. So far (just finished HELL), there could have been a lot more done a lot better as far as monster shocks go. More varied monster usage for a start, better monster lurking, more varied attacks, more Imps crawling across the ceiling, more monsters in vents etc etc. However as I'm saying I think the current "shock" gameplay mechanic is okay and works - but yes more could have been done.

The Trites are cool. I like almost all the monsters.

Personally, I have felt like I'm in an overrun base. This game has got me immersed more than most games, which is great. A lot of that is due to incidental things though, rather than convincing monster attacks. 

More varied monster usage for a start, better monster lurking, more varied attacks, more Imps crawling across the ceiling, more monsters in vents etc etc.

I think one of the problems is that doing this sort of thing is very heavyweight in terms of art resources - each special Imp attack, for instance (crawling down walls, climbing up ledges, jumping from things) is implemented as its own unique animation, usually suitable for only the single place where it's used. If they made the animations and AI more general purpose and flexible, this sort of thing would have become a lot easier; it's a real pity they didn't.

Oh well. More fodder for the mod crews, I guess. 

Although I haven't played the game yet, I suspect that the reason more scripted monster introductions weren't used was due to time constraints and stuff. If there's one thing to be said about id, it's that they're generally pretty good at getting their games finished. 

Sorry for my late entry: I was distracted by my last few days of work for the summer, so I guess you could say it spawned behind me. I'll also warn you that it seems I've written a fucking essay on the topic here, so maybe get a glass of water or something before you start.

Before I continue I'll say I haven't beaten the game yet. I'm playing on Veteran, and I've gone through hell. I'm in I think the CPU (I just passed the homage to the computer maze in E1M2, which actually warmed the cockles of my heart to see), but I really just haven't felt like playing the game very much. It feels too much like work.

I blame a combination of design and implementation for the monsters. They often don't lend themselves to good implementation at all - they're not often very versatile - but id's effort to use them erred on the side of making the game hard for the wrong reasons.

Monster's strengths are often played to a little too well. The imp, for example, being probably the most versatile monster in the game, capable of being dangerous at any range, is almost never used at a distance in a grenadier fashion. They're always stuck in your face (or up your ass), where you've got a lot less chance to avoid the fireballs and even less chance of getting away in reasonable shape should they get close enough to use their arms.

The chaingunners are another example. The farther away they are, the more of a bitch they are, and id's designers tended to throw them in far enough away that dealing with them was a chore and not a challenge. There is no decent way to avoid being hurt by these guys, and if they're at a sufficient distance it's even harder to retaliate effectively.

I can only remember one case where this isn't true: at the bottom of a lift in delta labs (I think), you're treated to a pile of boxes, and a door. Chaingunner comes in, and you're clearly meant to crouch behind the boxes where he can't see you. If you try and stand up to take potshots at him, you're almost instantly treated to damage. I flung hand grenades over the top of the box until I heard his body sizzling away. Once again - a chore.

After my third or fourth one, I was struck with a thought: "Hey, the chaingun takes time to spin up. Maybe that's the weakness I'm meant to try and exploit." I tried it, but to no avail - spin up time is slim to none. Having some would have been a great addition to this monster, in the same vein as the bit of warning you get before a Shambler's lightning attack, but alas, such is not the case.

Take trites. The melee monsters in this game all fall into two categories: the kind that come toward you slowly, then leap directly into your face, and the kind that come towards you at the exact same speed as your sprint, without stopping. Trites are the first kind, as are those GOD DAMNED MOTHER FUCKING WINGED INFANTS. Pinkies, tentacle-grunts, and maggots (the two-headers) are in the second. The lost souls are in a much more horrific category all their own.

Now, let's break this down. We already seem to have basically agreed that melee damage is far too difficult to recover from thanks to mutant owl neck syndrome. The problem is compounded by the fact that melee encounters are also far too difficult to avoid in most cases. With trites and cherubs, the leaps cannot be avoided because there's almost no anticipation cue to let you know it's coming. Besides the fact that they always hit you a little above eye level, the fact that they're so small (and therefore also difficult to hit, conveniently enough) means they then drop out of your field of vision altogether and are now somewhere around you. After your neck recovers, you search frantically, find it by your right ankle or something, but by the time you're ready to shoot it IT DOES IT AGAIN.

Then pinkies. Oh, pinkies. I'm mostly through the game and I could count the number I've encountered in this game on one hand, and I can see why. It almost feels to me like the designers are going so far as to acknowledge that they know there's nothing you can do about these damn things so they're trying to be nice. You can maintain the same distance with them if you backpedal at full speed. This is all well and good if you've encountered the monster on the fucking Talladega motor speedway. In the game, you are going to back into walls and railings and have to go backwards around corners and through doors and more often than not wind up in a corner. Then what? There's no room in this monster's design for any actual gameplay.

more after the 5000 character limit ... 

For the melee creatures, the plan of attack never changes, and always consists of "back the fuck up until they're all dead." This alone is bad enough - %100 of the player's attention is sapped by dealing with one monster. If you add any second monster, in the close quarters of a UAC base, you're basically fucking the player over. id in true form goes and makes things even worse by always sticking that monster behind you. (As an aside, does anybody else who doesn't have money laying around to buy an entire surround sound system find it completely unfair the game more or less requires one?)

The eventual upshot of all these things combined is that the player winds up having to find exploits and "safe methods" to deal with the monsters, because playing with them in what I will go out on a limb to call 'normal' fashion is just too damn unrewarding to be any fun. You don't want to try and tackle a monster by putting yourself in danger because even though that might make it easier to deal the damage necessary, you know that the arrangement will be far from fair.

Here's what I've always been under the impression that monster combat in an action-oriented FPS like this should consist of. You enter a situation, and there's monsters. They're in different places, and attack you in different fashions, and you should have to keep moving, using cover when you have to, and use your brain to avoid as many attacks as you can while balancing that with polishing off the monsters. In what order and with what weapons adds to the reflex-strategy of the whole thing. Yes, I am basically describing Q1SP. We all like Quake, don't we? The challenge to the player is in knowing how to use the options his environment presents him to avoid damage. Greater difficulty levels should mean greater difficulty in avoiding damage, but never impossibility. You could, if you were fucking Fred Astaire, play through Quake on nightmare without getting hurt very much at all. It wouldn't be easy, of course, but that's the idea.

As you progress through a game, your health is slowly worn down, depending on your skill, and the amount of health the designer gives you along the way to offset that. Thus, on higher difficulty, you spend a lot more time in poor shape, and thus each encounter has higher stakes. If you get lumped into some big final combat in Quake with 13 health and a nail, and there's some shells on the other side of a room past a bunch of Ogres and Scrags, it might take you a few tries but Quake's design inherently doesn't discourage you from trying because you know it's doable. If you're quick, and the Elder Gods happen to smile on you, you can clear the room and still have 13 health. Once you finally pull it off you're on cloud nine.

Doom3 isn't that forgiving. Quake, and even the original Doom, would always have me saying "Man, lemme try that again." A session of Doom3 usually consists of me angrily stabbing F9 and going "Come on, what the fuck was that?"


Here's what I propose.

First of all, there's owl neck. Shambler, frankly, I don't care how much it contributes to the atmosphere, if it ruins the gameplay mechanics then it's wrong. Fiends still scare me in Quake because they really hurt when they slam into you, but you can recover. They don't fuck you over in one shot. A lot of the monsters in Doom3 will do that.

I've got a simple solution to this problem. Instead of skewing the player's view up/down or left/right, roll it. You can tilt it until the player's head is on sideways, and it'll still give the player that sense of a hard jolt, but don't you dare move the crosshair. I'm surprised this was even an option, but taking away control of the crosshair during combat, I would think, should be an absolute fucking paramount no-no.

That alone might help things considerably IMO. The monsters, though, could use some tweaking. You should always be able to avoid attacks. If I'm in a big empty box map with any one monster and a crate in the middle it should be a cakewalk avoiding damage. Mentally put yourself in a map like that with any Quake monster, and think about what you'd do. The challenge comes from how those monsters are used - what space is presented in the level design to deal with them, and what other monsters the player has on his hands at the same time.

I can't picture any kind of scenario in Doom3, as it is out of the box, that allows for that. Any kind of room, any kind combination of what monsters come with the game. If the monsters' modes of attack are changed it changes how they are best implemented by an enormous degree. I've already written enough, though, and I'll be taking time later to determine exactly how the monsters that I want to use for my project will be changed. 

That's looks like an impressive essay on the matter; certainly long enough to satisfy. Unfortunately, I can't read any of it because it's blatantly full of spoilers :P necros has though, so he can filter me the relevant details.