![]() Unless they purposely spawn full ammo and health beforehand, there was no way in knowing if someone was entering a fight at full reserves, or with 10 points of health left. The problem that a lot of developers who made action games faced was that they never really knew the player’s resources going from one fight to the next. These changes also came with it the need to completely change how weapons were designed and the arenas themselves. If the player had to hide behind a wall, run away, or wait for something to recover, then that needed to be changed. One of the major points from the presentation was the fact that the designers never wanted the player to feel the need to stop engaging. ![]() In Doom Eternal the player can use glory kills, the flame belcher, and the chainsaw to restore health, armor, and ammo respectively. This is a complete 180 from other arcade shooters that would litter arenas with ammo packs and healing items to find or run back to.Įvery weapon has its own unique utility, making sure that nothing is wasted Everything that the player is going to be using in either Doom can be recovered or gained through the player’s actions. The key to id’s push forward combat is giving the player all the utility they need to succeed. What id did with Doom and Doom Eternal was completely rebuild the player’s abilities, and in turn, create a new way of designing combat encounters. The player can’t just unload with their best weapons, because what happens if there’s something stronger five minutes away that will kill them? Trying to play Halo Infinite was a pain for me with the number of times I kept running out of ammo in mid-fight and the two-weapon limit was not helping matters. While that worked for solving the healing problem, ammo hoarding was still an often-annoying part of FPS and TPS (third-person shooter) gameplay. The problem with this design was that to heal, the player had to remove themselves from combat and find a wall or chest-high barricade to hide behind. Their goal was to create a game where the player is always active during combat, and that meant removing anything that would either take the player out of the combat or stop them from engaging with enemies.ĭuring the late 2000’s and into the 2010’s, AAA developers embraced the idea of regenerating health as a workaround to the healing hoarding that was a factor in many action games. They didn’t want to just design another arcade FPS, or a more down-to-earth modern FPS. The GDC talk that id gave about Doom 2016 highlights what their mission statement was when designing the game. Push-forward combat is something that requires a different mentality when designing an FPS, and I want to talk about what developers are missing when it comes to it. ![]() I’ve recently play Halo Infinite, Serious Sam, and I’m still waiting on Ultrakill to finish up. Since these games have come out, there has been this rush by other FPS designers, modern retro notwithstanding, to try and design the next elevated FPS. The polarizing nature of the game comes down to a complete redesign carried from Doom 2016 with the nature of “push forward” combat. Doom Eternal is one of my favorite games of the last decade, and for many of you reading this, it may be on your list, or your worst games of the 2010’s.
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