6 years later, John Carmack admits noone could see Doom 3

[Rochey]

I'd often use them to take down charging Pinky demons, purely because they just run in straight lines and it only takes a few to kill one. It also helped that by the time I'd encountered the next one I'd have collected a whole heap of the damn thing.

Other than that they were pretty damn useless.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Yes, but they still had uses. Did anybody very even attempt to use Doom 3's bouncy fun balls?

I actually did get some use out of them. Once you realized that nearly every goddamn lift in the game would drop you into an ambush, I'd get in the habit of sending the lift down unoccupied, then tossing a few grenades after it. Still, it was the least-used weapon in the game.

[aieeegrunt]

I think Halo 2 still owns that crown.

What on Earth are you talking about? Sticky-grenades were godly for fighting Elites, and human grenades were decent in clearing out corridors.

Halo 2 grenades were firecrackers compared to Halo 1 versions.

Halo 2 grenades were much much weaker, you couldn't throw them as far, and they had stupid random bouncy football physics. So they went from being refreshingly usefull in Halo 1 to being the same useless ping pong noisemakers like in most other FPS's. The Halo 2 plasma's were also very inconsistent in sticking, and again were much shorter ranged and had football physics. To add insult to injury they also used up the left trigger in most control schemes.

[The Vortex Empire]

Halo 2 grenades were much much weaker, you couldn't throw them as far, and they had stupid random bouncy football physics. So they went from being refreshingly usefull in Halo 1 to being the same useless ping pong noisemakers like in most other FPS's. The Halo 2 plasma's were also very inconsistent in sticking, and again were much shorter ranged and had football physics. To add insult to injury they also used up the left trigger in most control schemes.

What's wrong with using the left trigger for grenades?

[aieeegrunt]

Nothing, if the grenades are actually useful. If they are'nt it's a big waste though.

[Cykeisme]

I disagree, I felt that the environments in Doom 3 are too bright. They should have turned the lights down, made it a bit darker.


Haha I just wanted to post that sentence, see how it felt.
I think id should have stuck to making a fast-paced action shooter like all its previous games, instead of going for a survival horror sort of thing. At the very least, they could have made the first quarter (or less) of the game with dark areas, and forcing the player to conserve ammunition. After that, it should have reverted to the familiar demon-blasting fun of the older Doom games.


As for hand grenades, I totally agree. Games should just leave them out if they don't want to make them useful.
id has always fucked them up, starting with Quake 2 and continuing into Doom 3. Hell, even Quake's grenade launcher bizzarely did not explode on impact, and was only marginally useful due to firing faster than the rocket launcher (and rocket grenade jumps, but I digress).

They're basically pointless in a lot of games, even though I try hard to get some use out of them. For example, most people probably didn't use grenades much in the first Half-Life, but I actually got pretty proficient with cooking them off and bouncing/arcing them to blast HECU Marines and smaller types of Xen enemies without exposing myself. I even use thermal detonators fairly regularly in Jedi Outcast and Academy, and there are a few memorable spots in the game where you can blow four or five stormtroopers to hell with a single well-placed thermal detonator (Academy's ragdoll made it very satisfying).
Still, it's vastly preferrable when they're actually an integral part of the game, like in Republic Commando or Borderlands (the latter having, in my opinion, one of the best implementations of hand grenades).

[Zaune]

I think part of the problem with grenades in an FPS is that in real life, grenades are only really useful for specific tasks that require a bit of coordination between squad members, and I can't think of many games in the FPS genre that have implemented proper small-unit infantry tactics.

[Stark]

You mean 'people would whinge', right? MP games have generally reduced players to a single non-replacable grenade per life, because grenade spam is such a serious problem even games with sniper-stacked teams and bunnyhopping don't want it.

[CaptHawkeye]

I actually thought of a system where weapon ammo and supplies get a seperate "respawn timer" for their use. Say you throw a grenade? Cool. No more grenades for you for like 30 seconds. Even if you die and respawn, that timer still has to count down before you can have your precious spam device back. This would also apply to the game's expensive super guns/special abilities/rawkets/vehicles etc etc. Shorter times generally being given to the shittier bog standard hardware.

Then people would whinge my game isn't Modern Warfare.

[Stark]

You mean... cooldowns, as seen in non-fps games for a decade?

The real solution is to fix bounce and throw physics, so you dont' see grenades going a million miles to annoy people. You'd never get away with FF nades, sadly.

[CaptHawkeye]

Oh, yeah my system isn't that new. RTS games have been using cooldowns to avoid ability spam forever.

But hey, we could think of ways developers could fix known problems all day. The problem is no one wants to fix these problems because conservative nerds would whine and conduct worthless e-boycotts.

[Stark]

Hey, stealing the MAG system slightly (ie, placing the 10x10 gamemap somewhere random within a 100x100 overall map) might even prevent map memorisation being the most important skill in shooters.

[CaptHawkeye]

You could theoretically fix map memorization (arguably the most predominant problem in ALL mp games) with procedural generation. Procedural generation has problems of its own though. It's definitely not the miracle-cure for gaming some guys claim it is.

[Stark]

Yeah, but that's a difficult solution. Taking a MAG map and just randomly placing the map edges seems less technically demanding - there's still memorisation, but a good sniper spot isn't always, so each round isn't a constant replay of each other.