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DOOM: The Dark Ages

pendragon1 said:
View attachment 731932
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Yes, it is now called MFG. It just also adds in a few random artifacts to mix things up and give you some lag to make the experience more difficult and challenging.

Kidding aside, if you have an OLED monitor, 120hz or faster. Turn on Vsync, lock the frame rate and run against like a textured wall, rocks, grass if you can find some in Doom. Turn on FG and do it again. I see a definite increase in blurriness and crawling within the textures. FG can look great without motion but for me it blurs the quality of the textures which I do notice. Of course if one uses motion blur, then FG will probably not add any additional blurriness. Also monitors with slower pixel response times will blur motion anyways.

Pushing 120fps anyways with DLSS quality, Vsync on my C2 TV. MFP at that refresh rate is pointless. Once I get a 240hz monitor, this should improve FG, with less blurring.
 
Welp, after reading about others who hated the whole dragon level and the difficulty with controlling it, I resorted to using a game pad to beat it. As an OG Doom guy (I played a beta of the original in November '93) I'm perhaps a little too passionate about the series so it feels heretical to use a controller but now I understand why one mainstream review criticized it as feeling like it was designed for consoles and not PC. Long story short, I'm thrilled to get past that level and start playing Doom again as it was meant to be played!
 
Niner said:
Just finished the campaign and it was awesome. I'll be playing it through again in the near future, but taking my time collecting all the items.
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Awesome is the word.

This game was such a pleasure. I also think the developer did a terrific job of making this game appealing to a much broader audience. For me, personally, being able to slow down the game to a more normal FPS speed was massive.

I’m also big on atmosphere and this game is dripping with atmosphere. Anyone like myself who couldn’t get into the previous two games should keep an open mind about this one. Also, Gamepass. Gotta love it. I wouldn’t have touched this game had it not been for GP.
 
The dragon riding sequence SUCKED balls, just took me out of the fun, run and gun action, it felt more tedious and annoying to play that part. But other than that, so far this game is really good.
 
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I got it on steam and finished first 3 levels again on steam also 100% them. I think I will continue to play on game pass and switch back to Steam version in case I miss some 100% crap.
Game is dope.
 
I just started (game pass FTW) playing it today. I don't hate it. Glad I didn't pay full price for it, but worth the monthly fee for sure.
 
My one minor beef, is it almost seems the gun and shooting are secondary or third in line to kill enemies.

Ok, I'm throwing my shield at a bad guy, then do the shield charge to whack them, and also shooting them, they then turn purple, and if you keep shooting them when purple not much happens or they even regain health, so when people your forced to get up close and melee ALL the time, or close it. I just wish I could blast enemies down with non-stop gun fire, and maybe just a couple shield moves.
 
Curious, what FOV are you running?

I'm on an ultaewide monitor, and trying out 105.
 
Zorachus said:
My one minor beef, is it almost seems the gun and shooting are secondary or third in line to kill enemies.

Ok, I'm throwing my shield at a bad guy, then do the shield charge to whack them, and also shooting them, they then turn purple, and if you keep shooting them when purple not much happens or they even regain health, so when people your forced to get up close and melee ALL the time, or close it. I just wish I could blast enemies down with non-stop gun fire, and maybe just a couple shield moves.
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They actually have quite a bit of HP left when they turn purple so you need to continue shooting quite a bit, but most enemies can be killed with just gunfire. It is probably to stop you from accidentally kill your HP and Ammo refill.
 
Fully intending on paying full price the moment AMD gets its shit together and releases FSR 4 for this game, I keep watching videos and it's getting harder and harder to wait.
 
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Decko said:
Fully intending on paying full price the moment AMD gets its shit together and releases FSR 4 for this game, I keep watching videos and it's getting harder and harder to wait.
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you probably dont need fsr with your system...
 
Now on chapter 12, and since like chapter 8 this game got super freaking cool and awesome. Love the setting and vibe in these chapters 8 to 12 so far. And the action is just in your FACE, like your up close and personal smashing things and deflecting spells back with a powerful punch, and the game plays smooth as butter and looks amazing.
 
Zorachus said:
Now on chapter 12, and since like chapter 8 this game got super freaking cool and awesome. Love the setting and vibe in these chapters 8 to 12 so far. And the action is just in your FACE, like your up close and personal smashing things and deflecting spells back with a powerful punch, and the game plays smooth as butter and looks amazing.
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Yup the game did not begin for me until chapter 8 - takes some time to build up, but once it does its amazing and my favorite of the series.
 
polonyc2 said:
the people have spoken...go back to the Eternal gameplay with parquor and platforming :)
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Wow. You took an article out of context and used it to support your minority world view. I'm shocked.

Here's my take on why Doom The Dark Ages isn't doing well.

Player engagement numbers are being used to cover up poor sales and mislead people into thinking the game is a huge success. The fact is, it isn't. I know people are going to talk about Game Pass cutting into sales and I absolutely agree that it does. However, successful games still show higher concurrent player counts on Steam. We saw other Game Pass titles do far better than Doom The Dark Ages on Steam.

Doom The Dark Ages is a flop. Why is it a flop? That's the more interesting question. The usual suspects that are responsible for the failure of many recent AA and AAA titles aren't present here. It's not woke. Its not brimming with DEI garbage or left-wing talking points. You'll find no trans ideology stuff, political commentary or anything like that. There is no obvious AI voice work, sloppy coding or game breaking bugs. It doesn't crash all the time or end up being the subject of memes due to its poor quality control, dumb AI or anything like that. Again, none of the usual suspects that plague games like Assassin's Creed Shadows, Dustborn, South of Midnight, Star Wars Outlaws Awakening: Unknown 9, or Concord are present here.

Personally, I don't think its any one thing. I think it comes down to a number of problems. Game Pass is certainly one of them. People can get their fill of the game for $10-$15, so why pay $70 for it? Single player games like this rarely have much replay value and therefore, $70 is a hard pill to swallow. Like it or not, some 60 or 70% of all gaming revenue comes from a handful of live service games. As gross as it is, there is the reality of current market conditions. Perceived value goes even lower given that Doom only takes around 20 hours to fully complete if memory serves.

While Doom 2016 is almost universally praised, Doom Eternal was a bit of a mixed bag for fans of the series. Some people loved the changes to the formula while others (myself included) hated it. I hated the limited chainsaw fuel. I hated the survival horror style ammunition economy. I hated the general map traversal with climbing and platform sections. It just didn't feel like Doom to me. It's the only game up to that point I hadn't finished and even played through multiple times.

While I don't consider anecdotes evidence, many people on various forums talked about their kids knowing little about the franchise and having zero interest in it. Part of this comes down to player tastes, market trends and things like that. The other part of it comes down to a potential lack of marketing. There really wasn't enough advertising or hype built up for the game. Compare this to the hype train of Cyberpunk 2077 or even Assassin's Creed Shadows. Those games had a lot of advertising, merchandising tie-ins and that kind of thing. No, not every game needs that to succeed, but it certainly doesn't hurt. I don't think id and Bethesda did enough to support the game from a marketing perspective.

Then there are other factors like Bethesda's general reputation and id's own reputation for how it treated the Doom 2016 and Eternal composer. I won't get into all that drama and my take on it is probably a bit different than some, but the fact is that it wasn't a good look for id at the end of the day. It looked like they simply didn't pay the composer who brought a much loved sound to the game that had a lot to do with creating the atmosphere of the earlier installments.

I also feel like the forcing of ray tracing on all the time was a mistake. Not just because it hurts performance, but because its a big middle finger to anyone not running a 30-series card or better. Heaven forbid you are at 4K on anything other than a 4080 or better. People running mid-range or low end cards from older series of GPU's are boned on this one and end up getting shafted performance wise without much of an upside graphically as compensation. The game doesn't look much better than Doom Eternal despite that requirement. At least when you tank your performance with Ray Tracing and what not in Cyberpunk 2077, you get a great deal of visual fidelity for it.

Finally, we turn to Doom The Dark Ages itself. The game is better than Eternal in my opinion, but its not amazing. It's decent, but I don't think its worth $70 unless you just want to scratch that nostalgic itch. (Which I did.) The mech and dragon sections have received particularly negative reception from some people, though these are pretty minimal at most. They do feel somewhat half-assed given the overly simplified combat, lack of take down animations and that kind of thing for it. The mechs are slow and clunky and only have a couple of attacks so the combat isn't all that varied or satisfying. It's like the normal combat on foot but more limited and much slower. The dragon flying stuff is decent, though the combat with it is pretty awful. The dragon feels weak and the scenes are mechanically more annoying than anything.

Combat wise, the ammunition economy is better than its predecessor. Enemies are a bit spongy though and a lot of your weapons get depleted often. It doesn't force as much weapon switching as Eternal does but that mechanic is still very much there. You just alternate between guns and the shield for the same thing. The game forces you to use the shield throw and parry mechanics to massive degree. It gets old really fast. It's novelty wears off quickly. You also have enemies that have to be dispatched a certain way and parry's are ultimately how you get through most of the combat. Glory kills are reduced to almost being non-existent. While I thought they were over done in previous games, this game doesn't allow them to happen enough.

The game also spends a great deal of time trying to communicate its story. It has a fair amount of cut scenes, but its really hard to get invested in what is essentially fan-fiction level writing skills applied to the ludicrous story of the original game from the 1990's. It was preposterous in the 1990's but we didn't care. Games weren't taken seriously as a medium at the time so the stories were mostly some loose excuse for the game play to happen. Doom for a lack of a better way to put it takes itself too seriously trying to get you invested in its absurd narrative. Something it never manages to do very well in my opinion.

At the end of the day you have a single-player narrative driven story based FPS game that isn't the best at combat or movement and fails on the story front. The game is pretty, but its not ground breaking on that front. It's steep PC requirements don't feel justified and aren't worth the price of admission.

Doom The Dark Ages is a pure semi-story driven shooter and I think that's refreshing in a way, but I'm not surprised that people aren't really wanting to spend the money on it. Fact is, most shooters these days are either multiplayer affairs, extraction shooter slop fests, or some type of hybrid RPG. We aren't in the early 2000's where shooter/RPG hybrids were awful shooters and mediocre RPGs. These days the technology exists to do both and I just don't think the appetite is there anymore for something as mindless and simplistic as Doom The Dark Ages is. Especially given the relatively complex mechanics for dealing with enemies. Those sabotage player agency as it forces you to use specific methods for dealing with enemies that often makes the game feel more repetitive than it probably is.

TLDR: It's not doing well for a lot of different reasons. It's not purely that the game is on Game Pass and it isn't because the game is "woke" or a buggy mess or even because of the way Doom 2016's composer was treated. People seem to have this idea that its one thing or another but in reality, I think its a convergence of factors that are responsible for the game's commercial failure.
 
Dan_D said:
Personally, I don't think its any one thing. I think it comes down to a number of problems...
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I actually agree with you for a change...I said it earlier in this thread...it's a combination of reasons: the gameplay is a part of it...Eternal was divisive but a lot more people enjoyed it and it was praised in a lot of places as being one of the best FPS games of all time...but the other things like the $70 price, Gamepass and the loss of Mick Gordon also play a role...I don't think the forced ray tracing plays a role at all...it's 2025- ray tracing is not new anymore...most AAA gamers have upgraded their GPU to at least a 2000 series card
 
15 bucks for a fuck sounds better than 70 bucks for a bj. That is why it is doing poorly. As long as MS foots the bill - what do I care?

Will there be another one? Probably not but I am enjoying this for what it is. Badassery to the max. Too many pussy kids not wanting to play anything requiring a little bit of skill. Also it doesn’t make for very good yt/twitch/etc. watch as you spoil the whole story/gameplay.
 
Presented without comment.

https://80.lv/articles/doom-the-dark-ages-has-reportedly-sold-less-than-1-million-copies
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That tracks. Why spend $70 on a sub-20 hour single-player FPS experience with little to no replay value when you can play it (and anything else you want) on Game Pass for $15? All you have to do is cancel so it doesn't renew your subscription and play through the game within 30 days and your golden.
 
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KickAssCop said:
Will there be another one? Probably not...
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of course there'll be another Doom game...doesn't matter if this sold 10 copies or 10 million...it's Doom...maybe they'll take a break and move on to something else first- a Quake reboot?
 
My opinion it's the steep $70 price tag for a single player shooter, that once you complete it, your pretty much done with it. And it's 18 to 20 hours long, so a GamePass makes more sense.

Also The Doom franchise is popular with the over 40 crowd, but the younger folks don't care about it, or heck don't even really know about it. New Doom games aren't on the radar of the twenty something crowd.

Also the big change in gameplay, showing it off with a shield and slower movement, playing like a "tank class" and riding dragons, etc... may have turned off gamers thinking this isn't "Doom" it's some Fantasy shooter thing.

Plus I agree on the lack of marketing, unless your a big Doom player, doubt most people even knew this game was coming until it came out this month.

And the mention of it not being "w0kE" LOL what? Or not having DEI or trans stuff in it? WTF, that has nothing to do with Doom games, so why even mention that stuff. Plus games that are inclusive do very well, like BG3 a top seller and super award winner. Only Reich-wingers get butthurt on that stuff.

Bottomline this game tanked because maybe it's an old franchise that hasn't been hyped well, or have a big Twitch following? But then again plenty of old franchises still around today that do very well. I guess I'm kind of stumped as to why it didn't do well?

I've been playing Doom since 1993. I would rank Dark Ages as good, not great, not bad. So far chapters like 8 to 12 were amazing 9/10 rating, but other chapters with dragon riding or mech robot fighting I rank a 4/10. Overall I'd give Dark Ages 7.5/10 rating.
 
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polonyc2 said:
of course there'll be another Doom game...doesn't matter if this sold 10 copies or 10 million...it's Doom...maybe they'll take a break and move on to something else first- a Quake reboot?
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There won't be another one for a very long time if it lost money, and it likely will. If the numbers are true (800k sold), it's over. I think that's a massive shame. Microsoft only has itself to blame, gamepass is a complete disaster for studios. If a game is going to be on gamepass it means it has to be service oriented to survive. You can't make a single player AAA game and release on gamepass or you'll likely go bankrupt. Microsoft needs to either A. be more careful with what is on game pass, or B. Have the service die out over a few years.
 
Decko said:
There won't be another one for a very long time if it lost money, and it likely will. If the numbers are true (800k sold), it's over. I think that's a massive shame. Microsoft only has itself to blame, gamepass is a complete disaster for studios.
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I think here, it depends how much microsoft (gamepass) pay microsoft (the studio) for the gamepass rights, like in many case they are the same company, there is a risk if you are non-ip to be a giant gamepass success and if you do not have a service/post selling attribute, you burned all your audience right away (it did happen to a studio that sold weeks for a million, was a big success and nothing after)

But if you are a large establish IP, you probably get a good deal on a day1 gamepass release and if you are a giant success make good money from it.

This was on the extra version of gamepass ultimate that cost $20 a month.

2.2 millions customer spending say $16 a month on average (lot of them would have got it on a deal or from buying something promo), that $35 millions, if you are a main title for 2-3 months able to seen as responsible for $50 millions of games and have a good amount kick in your way (not sure the formula big title are able to get, some bonus if it is from new gamepass member maybe), it can work well.

Expedition 33 was day 1 gamepass release and sold 3.3 millions copies over it. If doom would have been a success , a lot of it would have been from mouse-keyboard steam audience
 
they shouldnt be putting brand new games on GP, wait 6 months to get some real sales.
 
pendragon1 said:
they shouldnt be putting brand new games on GP, wait 6 months to get some real sales.
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I agree, but also say $70 bucks is a lot for a single player shooter with no multiplayer, no CoOp, and no DLC this year. Shooters are typically quick games to run through, and then your done. I know several people that were turned off by the $70 price tag, and these are guys LOL that can EASILY afford it.
 
Zorachus said:
And the mention of it not being "w0kE" LOL what? Or not having DEI or trans stuff in it?
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You missed the point. I simply brought up the fact that the usual reasons why a lot of AAA titles flopped don't apply to Doom The Dark Ages. It's also really telling that this is the primary point you chose to address out of the long list of other points I made in my post.
Zorachus said:
WTF, that has nothing to do with Doom games, so why even mention that stuff.
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No shit? I said as much. I'll quote myself here:
Dan_D said:
The usual suspects that are responsible for the failure of many recent AA and AAA titles aren't present here. It's not woke. Its not brimming with DEI garbage or left-wing talking points. You'll find no trans ideology stuff, political commentary or anything like that. There is no obvious AI voice work, sloppy coding or game breaking bugs. It doesn't crash all the time or end up being the subject of memes due to its poor quality control, dumb AI or anything like that. Again, none of the usual suspects that plague games like Assassin's Creed Shadows, Dustborn, South of Midnight, Star Wars Outlaws Awakening: Unknown 9, or Concord are present here.
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See? I mentioned that was NOT a factor.
Zorachus said:
Plus games that are inclusive do very well, like BG3 a top seller and super award winner.
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Everyone pulls out BG3 to say that "woke" isn't a death sentence for game sales. The same people who say crap like that also don't seem to grasp that BG3 made that stuff optional and didn't shove it down the players throat and that simply including representation of different sexual orientations isn't by itself a sign that something is "woke". The content was specifically included in a way that didn't take away from the rest of the game. Plenty of games shove this crap down your throats and do it at the cost of writing quality and poor characterization. For every BG3 there are at least a dozen Dragon Age Veilguards.
Zorachus said:
Only Reich-wingers get butthurt on that stuff.
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Tell me you don't understand the nuance of a subject without telling me you don't understand the nuance of a subject.
Zorachus said:
I agree, but also say $70 bucks is a lot for a single player shooter with no multiplayer, no CoOp, and no DLC this year. Shooters are typically quick games to run through, and then your done. I know several people that were turned off by the $70 price tag, and these are guys LOL that can EASILY afford it.
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This I can agree with. At $70 its a hard sell. The perceived value just isn't there. Hell I can easily afford the game, I bought it and wished I had just played it on Game Pass. I like the game, but its not worth $70.
 
LukeTbk said:
I think here, it depends how much microsoft (gamepass) pay microsoft (the studio) for the gamepass rights, like in many case they are the same company, there is a risk if you are non-ip to be a giant gamepass success and if you do not have a service/post selling attribute, you burned all your audience right away (it did happen to a studio that sold weeks for a million, was a big success and nothing after)

But if you are a large establish IP, you probably get a good deal on a day1 gamepass release and if you are a giant success make good money from it.

This was on the extra version of gamepass ultimate that cost $20 a month.

2.2 millions customer spending say $16 a month on average (lot of them would have got it on a deal or from buying something promo), that $35 millions, if you are a main title for 2-3 months able to seen as responsible for $50 millions of games and have a good amount kick in your way (not sure the formula big title are able to get, some bonus if it is from new gamepass member maybe), it can work well.

Expedition 33 was day 1 gamepass release and sold 3.3 millions copies over it. If doom would have been a success , a lot of it would have been from mouse-keyboard steam audience
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Okay maybe I need to be more specific, a single player AAA shooter that can be finished quickly (12-18 hours) and cast aside is not a viable game for gamepass. Expedition 33 is a longer RPG (27 main quest, 42 with sidequests and extras, 60+ completionist) with a decent amount of side content and a lower entry price because it's a smaller studio. Length for Doom: https://gamerant.com/how-long-to-beat-doom-the-dark-ages-length-hltb/ Length for Expedition: https://howlongtobeat.com/game/152016


Doom's tech is superior to Expedition and was made by hand, it's not just a fork of unreal it's a ground up implementation of a lot of really cool tech. Maybe you'll get another Doom but it'll be on Unreal 6 or something and made on the cheap.
 
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