Also, the punters will find out soon enough how fucking boring "90s-style" FPS action is when you don't have a progression through properly handcrafted levels.

Imagine Quake with randomly generated levels? It would be boring as shit. Hell, even handcrafted levels, but with randomly generated monster spawning, is boring as shit (see: Quonquer Jam).

The only thing that makes quake work as a game is proper level design and proper monster placement. 

Sounds like you underestimate Quake a lot. 

What is quake, or any other fps, without encounter design and level progression? Hint: it rhymes with boring. 

Sock's "player survey" thread got me thinking about this again, and it seems quite a few people in that thread agree with me that Quake's monsters are just "there" and the interesting part of the game is the journey through the levels.

There would literally be nothing to hold my attention if monsters and rooms were spawned at me according to an algorithm. There would be none of the clever setpieces, gags, or carefully placed combinations of elements that make up 100% of the interesting bits of that game. 

 

I've heard people saying the same thing about Quake's weapons. But simplicity isn't necessarily bad.

In case of Quake, relatively simple and straightforward mechanics make for an entertaining experience. Maybe not as much as in Doom, but still, if the game wasn't fun itself, it wouldn't attract so many level designers.

Besides, the aforementioned Qonquer mod/jam was popular enough, although I think it would benefit from some more thought put into how the waves progress. Which brings me to the next point: absolute randomness might not sound very interesting, but there's usually a fair amount of rules behind the way things operate. The trick is to find a good balance between unpredictability and design.

Easier said than done, of course. 

Kinn didn't say that simplicity is bad. I certainly don't think it's bad. I prefer simple but robust game systems to complex and really badly thought-out ones. Doom and Quake are very simple games but they still require a bit of time to master and to learn all their quirks, and good handcrafted level design, controlled progression (not in a restrictive way in this context) and hand-made monster encounters make the game much deeper than it first appears. Even with the small roster of monsters in Quake, you can have a wide variety of encouters that are crafted with care and not left to randomization.

Procedural generation is good on paper but I seriously don't think it works all that well. Like, I love Diablo and all but some generated levels are sometimes much easier or much harder than usual. I think procedural generation can be good for little details and small things, not whole levels. 

Yeah good point - in fact simplicity is an attribute I should have put on my list - games with simple, elegant mechanics usually score much higher for me than cumbersome feature-bloated games (that are usually the result of design-by-committee, or when you have rival franchises and every time one game introduces [feature X], all the competitors then scramble to shoehorn their version of [feature X] into their next soulless bowel movement that passes as a game).

I often bang on about Shadow of the Colossus but if you want a superb example of how to do minimalist mechanics properly, look no further. 

Yeah, I'm not ragging on quake's simplicity at all - again, simplicity (mechanics-wise) is one of quake's strengths.

One of the things I loved going from doom to quake is how they simplified the mechanics a little bit (removed the map, and the "use" button) whilst at the same time made the environment more immersive, and yet even without the map, you never get lost. 

Maybe "bad" wasn't exactly the right word. More like shallow without the supplement of really good level design. 

the greater you can expand the possibility space with the fewest mechanics the better IMO. I think overdesigning is an easy trap to fall into. complexity =/= depth.

I often bang on about Shadow of the Colossus but if you want a superb example of how to do minimalist mechanics properly, look no further.

+1. I consider Shadow of the Colossus to be one of the best games ever created. It really is a masterfully designed and executed game. 

killpixel really is my spirit animal :} 

 

Didn't the development of Quake suffer time restraints? Because that forced the designers to restrict alot of stuff which they had planned or partially made. 

 

Id Software was trying to make an MMO FPS then they had all the assets made (maps, models, textures etc) but were waiting for Carmack to finish the engine, then they got behind. They then scrapped the original idea of the game and made a doom like fps shooter with doom style weapons. Poof Quake! 

fun gameplay, interesting aesthetics (no matter the tech), a sense of adventure 

Poof Quake

Look, just because there's a screen where you can try out different combinations of shirt and trouser colours... 

Probably most important is a game that doesn't piss me off. 

One thing that sits outside of the gemplay that I do appreciate is menu/interface snappyness and fast loading times.
Granted games like Doom and Quake probably mostly benefit of this due to being x hardware generations removed but nothing gives me more of an uh-oh feeling that sluggish skipping menus first thing, I know the controls will be "laggy" and am right 95% of the time 

I did consider that amongst various other related factors, but that should be under "obligatory" rather than being a matter of the gamers' preference! 

What I value and don't value otherwise, hrmm, I might be a bit of an odd duck I don't know.

For MP FPS I value a completely level playing field from noob to veteran - no complicated bunny hop / trick jump mechanics to master and other item acquiring fluff or whatnot - really a minimum interface between each players reflex/muscle coordination, pretty much closer to the "body" - more like a real "DM" sport like fencing or boxing whatever. That is why I much prefer Doom to Quake 1 MP.

Combined with the 99.9% in game time being actual active playing time for DM or CTF in Doom makes it heaven for me. I really would like to find something comparable for variety though :(

SP is another story...a long one 

woah, spam is actually participating in discussions here ? 

It's because spam is evolving. The once sharp lines between spammer and spammee, are dissolving into the digital abyss. What does the future have in store? Find out these bold new truths in my new e-book, which you can download for a one-time fee of only $16.99