Did id design the best FPS levels in the world?

ID software where Gods. They're not worth mentioning now...

With regards to Doom and Doom 2? Yes. Quake 3 arena's mp maps? Yes. Quake's actual single player stuff? **** NO.

In that context Unreal 1 and 2 had more consistent level design for the solo play, then there is Half Life and some of the better levels in Half Life 2, at their peak Monolith was under-valued for how well designed some of their levels were. And then there is Metroid Prime, which is basically Super Metroid the FPS, and it's level design is mother fucking brilliant. Plus there are legit gems like Shadow Warrior classic, Blood, and Duke Nukem 3D that made the most of being doom clones.

ID at their peak was amazing, because in the case of Doom they got a lot of things right, overall? Even without counting Rage, their Quake campaigns were garbage. And Doom 3 fucking sucks.

I agree with this.

Unfortunately while aesthetically Doom 4 looks on the mark, particularly the shooting mechanics, with many modern gamer reviewers (20 years old) undoubtedly claiming it is old-school, having never actually played a old-school title beyond "easy" for 15 minutes, this will be young-people gobbledygook, with the game most likely involving walking in a straight line. Excitement is low.

Disagree with the man who said all that big post above, Unreal had inconsistent design, not even a speck on Quake, It's main strength wasn't the level design (which was inferior) but superior AI. Having said that though, Quake and Doom both knew how to have weapon and enemies rock/paper/scissor off each other far better than any Epic title.

Regarding multiplayer, while Quake 3 is arguably the peak of the arena genre, it was peppered with mediocre maps.

Team Arena especially, a reaction to Unreal Tournament featured mediocre maps, completely negating the games tightly compressed pacing.

Yes... Not anymore though.

I love most of IDs games.

I freaking love RAGE. It's clearly not for you though. You claim "enemies simply run at you" ike it's any standard shooter... Yet, the way I see the enemies move and react in RAGE, I have never seen in another FPS.

In fact I wanted a sequel to Rage way more than Doom. Doom 3 and the expansion are the only bad ID games I played.

So no, ID is back in business after the misstep that was Doom 3 and your opinion is totally wrong :)

Definitely.

Machine Games is also continuing the tradition.

@R4gn4r0k: RAGE has the best AI in FPS games since FEAR. FACT. BTW I really enjoyed the game. My only complaint would be its length, maybe... Of course it had some minor flaws but for me nothing too major.

Completely agree. That's why I loved finishing the game multiple times: the enemies always seemed to react to me, and not be scripted and be the same situation each time.

Personally, I didn't like the tech behind it. When it came out I couldn't play it on my AMD card, Textures always looked muddy, things like that.

You thought the length was too long ? Or you felt the ending didn't close of the game well ?

Ah yes. I love all the recent FPS that focus on making the shooting as visceral and as much fun as possible.

Machine games did a great job with the two Wolfensteins.

Not to be a negative Nancy (assuming Nancy is real and not used purely for the purposes of alliteration) but the New Order was movie game that played like Call Of Duty..

Without a doubt they were. I still consider the old Doom and Quake games the best FPS ever created.

Yes. Yes they did.

The level design of modern FPSs look retarded in comparison.

Good example of how level design has fallen:

Both of your opinions are wrong. Doom 3 was awesome.

I really liked both RAGE and Doom 3, personally. Instead of hating Doom 3 for not being a prettier Doom 2, I enjoyed the new atmosphere and pace it brought, the graphics were amazing, the guns were awesome to fire, the enemies were scary and fun to kill. RAGE was way too short, imo. But fun as hell with those awesome weapons and cool enemies. Agreed that its AI was really good, which also added to the fun. I just felt like the game was over way before I wanted it to be.

Imo, id are awesome. Doom 4 looks pretty sweet, although I really don't like the "press a button to instantly kill highlighted enemy" thing. Looks stupid, and will be boring after the 50 millionth time you do it.

I remember when the only mainstream FPS games were Wolf 3D, Doom, Hexen, Heretic and Duke Nukem 3D. Good times, remember being like 10 or 11 and just loving it. Then the day came where I stumbled upon Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and everything changed.

I loved Q3A maps - most of them. I wish we had something like that today. There is nothing more satisfying than hitting 2 railgun shots on moving target, consecutively.

Yeah, old school FPS had bigger levels. They also had less going on in them. And it was basically the same environment, textures and corners you saw everywhere else.

You make it sound like there is no trade-off. There is.

Played all the Bioshock games one after another. In no way did the levels of Infinite feel smaller than 1&2.

There was fun to be found in Doom 3.

And no, I compared Doom 3 more as stand alone title, then comparing it with the previous ones. Never played Doom 2...

In the year that I played Far Cry and Half Life 2... Doom 3 felt like nothing special. It was fun, that was it. Wasn't a great shooter or anything. It was just fun at times.

RAGE did feel like something special. I loved the car combat, the racing, loved the shooting, loved the AI, ...

The ending is so jarring at first. But I've actually grown to like it :P

You really should. It's still fun as hell. If you're interested, get Doom 2 and download ZDoom, which makes you able to play it like a modern FPS.

Hah, you mean in a good way like:

Crawling, leaning, weapons that have multiple fire modes, ...

Or you mean modern FPS in a bad way like:

Blood on the screen, can't jump over really low walls, only carry 2 weapons

:P

I mostly mean being able to look around with the mouse how you want instead of just horizontally, being able to jump, having better controls and stuff. It just makes the game much more fun and playable.

imo one aspect Doom 3 gets right, which other supposed survival horror games fail at is resources.

In Resident Evil the player can slip past enemies easily attaining a hugely empowering arsenal towards the end of the game. In Dead Space this pretense doesn't exist, the player will be constantly dumping ammo, comparatively, on Doom 3's hardest difficulty (much like Quake) the player will be scraping the environment to survive, with nigh on 1 hit kills.

@Litchie said:

Yes. Yes they did.

The level design of modern FPSs look retarded in comparison.

Good example of how level design has fallen:

The irony with a much lauded; the "Citizen Kane moment", and "the thinking mans FPS", it is a mechanically dumb game compared to Doom. and Quake. While Bioshock attempts to be "intellectual" through narrative proposing you think, both Doom and Quake demand you think directly through the game-play itself; stemming from a unpretentious concept of "find key".

Yes, without a doubt. The levels made those games what the are and the reason why almost all shooters today are crap is because the levels are so boring.

Hehe, I figured as much.

Still, I think I would have a very hard time adjusting to such an old game.

My favourite FPS from the old school ones has to be Duke Nukem 3D, as it had a ton of fun weapons. You could freeze foes, shrink them, ...

And Quake 3 for its absolutely legendary multiplayer.

But frankly, I like modern (scripted) singleplayer FPS (starting with Half Life) over the open levels that Doom and Quake provided :)

Yes they did with Doom 1 and 2 both SP and MP. They then went on to make one of the worst FPS ever made in the history of videogames (Quake). Unbelievable that the same team who created Doom came out with this shit, though Quake Arena MP was great, all the SP Quakes sucked donkey balls.

What's wrong with Quake? It's levels are just as diabolical as those in Doom 1 and 2. Where Quake got dinged is lack of story. But, there's no doubting its level design.

That's why Quake 2 has more of a story in the SP campaign.

I dunno. Who fucking cares, Jankarop?

Imho, Doom 3 is one of the best FPS games of all time. It looks great even today.

What? They totally did. There was some genuine room for exploration in Bioshock 1 and 2, Infinite is a freakin amusement park line.

**** that, Unreal 4 Life.

They went uncontested for so long. Today's FPS makers owe a debt of gratitude to id.

I happen to think the new Wolfenstein was the best fps I played in the last 7 years. So even in their low days, they make single player a lot better than the trash that comes out in today's fps games.

Edit: I just found out they were not the developers of The new order. I remember seeing their name on the splash screen.. I'm confused.

It's interesting comparing these games, Quake's level design had an emphases on tight multi layered levels with Dooms (particularly Doom 2's) had an emphasis on sheer breadth.

Dooms gameplay focused on splash shooting dozens of enemies with wide arsenal while Quake featured sparse weaponry acting more relevant in regards to the (also sparse) enemy types, usually consisting of 2-4 at time, lesser than Dooms, but more purposeful.

While Doom has tense moments of the player frantically trying to take out as many of a mob as humanly possible before dropping, Quake is a game in which the player is scared to turn corners, the Shambler in particular was fucking terrifying.

I honestly think that people are over estimating the level design in games like Doom or Quake. These games, for the most part, have really small levels with the same concept all the time (find the three keys and then progress). Games like Dark Souls and Metroid Prime are the gold standard of level design since they present world environments which are interconnected from top to bottom, in comparison, Doom's and Quake's level design is extremely fragmentary (each level is a standalone maze with no connection to other levels). You can say that this is because of engine and memory limitations, but it doesn't change the facts I mentioned regarding their level design

I also find the level environment in these games to be incredibly repetitive (like if you have seen three or four levels then you basically seen everything), and also, as far as I can remember, Doom's engine didn't support "layers above layers environment", hence it was actually a 2D game (its maps were completely flat), and thus it didn't have the vertical game design that you see in modern games today.

Considering none of the original founding staff still work there, I'm not sure why the id Software name persists.

As for the topic at hand, I definitely agree with the general assertion that FPS games these days are mostly dumbed down to the point of nauseating simplicity.

At the age of 10-12 I could work my way through most of the levels in Doom II: Hell on Earth. It makes me sad that comparable games these don't even force the player to problem solve AT ALL.

I personally feel 3d realms were the cream of the crop.

Quake's story was the same as every Doom and Quake game. You're a marine, kill shit just because, the end.

What was wrong with Quake was it looked just horrible and played worse, ugly dreary levels with nothing at all going on in them and it felt claustrophobic compared to Doom 1 and 2. Quake 2 was exactly the same. They were just crap games the story had nothing to do with it. Nobody cared about story in FPS games in those days and with Quake iD were just showcasing a game engine they didn't even try to pretend they were making SP games that were supposed to be enjoyable though like I said Quake Arena MP was outstanding.

Doom 1 and 2 were just fun as hell though, amazing what they produced with those two games considering the technology available to them at the time.

no and everyone in this thread who voted yes is wrong because id made great levels in doom 1, 2 and quake 1 and 2. Then they sucked. I think most of those levels came from the levelord not id software especially since id software doesnt exist anymore. No one is left from the old team.

Old fps like doom, blood and others have far superior level design than modern fps.

@R4gn4r0k: id take a sequel to rage as well mostly because i like how they did apocalypse wasteland unlike the 50s feel of the fallout games and the melee combat of mad max.

But the engine was garbage, so were the graphics and the combat was awful, guns were extremely weak and inaccurate, yes enemies did run up to you and as for "reaction" they barely reacted to getting shot, as if you were shooting at them with a bb gun, i dont know about you but if an enemy has to fall and trip over a bazillion of times before he decides to grace us with his death, then maybe you need a better gun. It was managable initially but later on the enemies kept getting more bullet spongy but not bigger or more dangerous in fact guns kept feeling weaker and weaker. Enemies may react to been hit but the fact every time you shot a "Armored" enclav......sorry i meant authority, enemy and blooded poped out everywhere from their armor as if it was made of leather instead of metal, i lost all immersion. On second thought the worst part was that everything was so fake and staitic, everything was blurry, try shooting that telephone on the desk, nope doesnt move doesnt explode, what about that computer over there? Nope as tough as a rock might as well use it for cover. Combine that with the lack of shadows or lighting and the game felt like a static background that enemies refused to die after getting shot. Wolfenstein new order on the other had got the combat right. You didnt even have to aim down the sights. It was more old school that way and guns felt powerful with arms and legs getting blown off.

@uninspiredcup: well it didnt play like call of duty, it wasnt uber scripted like cod and you didnt have to aim down the sights or rely on health regen. Infact i would say metro last light, far cry 3 (the campaign) and max payne 3 played more like a "movie".

Seriously most of the time the new order let you do what you want, wanna sneak? sure, wanna go guns and blazzing? sure? There were cutscenes during the start and the end of the level or when you finished a section and opened a door. Other than that you could freely play the game without getting interupted. On the other hand metro was filled with doors and airducts or other climbing objects that had to have a cinematic animation as you used them and you were throwing knives at russians. Still you could play stealth or go guns blazing but most of the time the game left you alone. Far cry 3 campaign on the other hand is even more scripted than cod, mandatory stealth sections mandatory action sections, QTEs and constant zoom in cinematic momets on character faces. Then there is max payne 3 that every 20 seconds it through a cut scene at you and equiped the wrong weapon or dropped the weapon or skipped entire rooms for the sake of "cinematics" climbing ladders? pftttt let us cutscene that out for ya, we can give you control when there is shooting, who wants to actually go from one area to another while we can teleport you with cutscenes?

Far cry 4 on the other hand as ubisoft said focused more on open world and doing things your way, metal gear v seems to be doing the same thing. Dishonored was also pretty damn good.

While they make superb levels, no doubt, I found the few instances in which the game deviates e.g. "shoot crack on the wall" personality wasn't a fan of.

One of the pro's that set 3dRealms apart was obviously character, while in Doom or Quake both the Marine the Ranger simply served as an avatar to accommodate the gameplay, Lo Wang and Duke Nukem were properly defined characters injecting personality into the game; namely B-movies action heroes.

Not to say id software games didn't have personality,subtle things such as the characters reaction in the hud, in enemy fighting, the satanic architecture with an awesome soundtrack went along wayto drawing the player in.

It's unfortunate the steam version needs a user patch for music, as so much of the atmosphere is lost.

Yes

Haven't played Quake, but Wolfenstein and Doom levels are ridiculously overrated. They are just samey, repeating, twisty mazes where you've to grab keys over and over again. Just because you've to search every corner of a big twisty level doesn't mean it's good.

The weapons did feel powerful to me... but yeah some enemies are bullet-spongy

Think of this like a metro like world where people are shooting weaker bullets :p

Shotgun and Crossbow were really powerful though ^^

I actually think Raven was better at level design than id in first half of 90s

@R4gn4r0k: dude at some point i was like "screw it" sold my ammo and bought rocket launcher ammo with the ridiculously max capacity i was noobtubing everyone in the face.

I liked using a mix of all the weapons.

That was the fun thing... at a time where most FPS had a 2 weapon limit.

@R4gn4r0k: true but it will be better with more energetic weapons if you know what i mean.

Really now? Has anyone gone back to play the Doom and Quake games after the 2000s?? The level design is atrocious. Flat, sprawling mazes with maps that do nothing to point you in the right direction. The gameplay was simplistic, is why it worked so well. But the core of level design is bare bones and not "good." I get we love Doom, but saying weird shit about things we haven't really sat down to analyze is not helping, lol.

Doom and Doom 2 were the pinnacle of the FPS genre back in the day. So imo id was great but nowadays they have mediocre titles like Rage. I have high hopes for Doom 4 though. That looks spectacular and a nod to going back to the roots of their greatness.

Aside from missing the entire point i.e. exploration, as someone who did "go back" literally 10 minutes or so ago, this is false; while not hand holding, Quake does indeed have indicator arrows throughout levels.

Doom also uses color coding to indicate direction via simple red/blue/gold.

It appears of the multiple people who have posted, the only one who has shown any clear indicating of never gone back.... is you.

Shocking.

Checkers uses simplistic concept; the intricacy comes from playing, such is the case with early id titles, the post above has a paradox of ha "the levels are aimless" i..e. think with "it is simplistic" mistaking concept with execution.

lol indeed.

@uninspiredcup: yeah, dont multi-quote like an asshole. i'm not going to give you a pinpoint reply on all of your broken-down gripes the way you'd like. but i have gone back to play the doom games recently with the XBLA versions of Doom 1&2. youre making a case out like i dont like the games. all i said was the level design is bad. the only thing that worked about them was that it was simplistic. but something that "works" is not the same thing as having the"best" level design. sorry i dont agree with yout opinion, but pretending i dont have the credentials as a rebuttal shows you dont know what you are talking about. and shows you are an jerkoff. next time, just ask instead of accusing. Also, fucking checkers isn't the same thing as a video game or video game level design, lol.

Close but no. Imo that would be 3drealms/monolith with Blood, Shogo , Aliens vs Predator 2