Doom (2016) Multiplayer — Excellence in Design
You’ve probably heard about the excellent DOOM reboot oft referred to as DOOM 2016. Many have praised it for its excellent single player, which has been sort of a throwback to older-school shooters with far less focus on a gripping narrative and a bigger focus on a power fantasy.
However DOOM 2016 can arguably be split up into their separate parts; singleplayer, competitive multiplayer and snapmap. While I would love to go into Snapmap at some point, unfortunately the current article will focus solely on the multiplayer.
The multiplayer component was not received well, being seen by many as easily the weakest part of the game. Some have argued it pulls down the experience as a whole. But why? Few have really delved into the subject, but I’ve been slogging through it recently in my quest to get all of the achievements for DOOM 2016 (which, unfortunately, includes the multiplayer).
Now there’s a few things I want to note before we get too deep into this. First off I am playing on PC on Steam. I am from the United States and have played on the North American servers exclusively, however it does appear most players play on NA anyways (likely due to lower player counts). So things like ping/quality of players will be ignored as well as huge disparity in skill levels. The game is two years old and it can’t exactly pick and choose which players to put in each match. I am also not going to hold the crappy playlists against it, either. Hard enough to fill up some games, anyways. Though it is certainly unfortunate as you will soon see.
Game Modes
Surprisingly, Doom’s multiplayer component features quite a slew of game modes right out of the get go. It’s fairly well rounded, covering most of the popular ones you’d see in a Halo or a Call of Duty.
- Team Deathmatch
- Domination (3 control points)
- Soul Harvest (Kill confirmed)
- Warpath (moving point capture)
- Sector (multiple zones that you must capture and hold for 15 seconds)
- Freeze Tag (one life, but enemies can res you)
- Clan Arena (Counter-Strike, single death, no HP/armor on map)
- Infernal Run (oddball)
- Deathmatch, Bloodrush and Possession are also available but I never played them. No players.
However the sad part is that most of these modes aren’t exactly interesting or creative. In fact, all of them are borrowed from other games.
Though I did find a few modes really enjoyable. I felt like Freeze Tag employed enough strategy and reduced chaos to be a lot of fun. Sector was also a very interesting game mode thanks to the timer preventing the map from turning into a grenade fest.
TDM and Soul Harvest are merely tolerable.
Domination, Warpath, Clan Arena and Infernal Run being absolutely abysmal to play.
Which may be strange as these should be fairly solid modes like they are in other games. Well the problem for that comes down to the maps.
Maps
The map selection is pretty bad. I honestly have no maps that I enjoyed through my 40 hours of playing the multiplayer so far. In fact, I only have maps that I specifically hate. I couldn’t name any of them off the top of my head nor could I explain in any detail what the layouts are.
For the sake of creating something readable I am going to look up their names and provide pictures to help, but they’re really all practically the same.
The main problem coming down to the fact that all of the maps are more or less the same design. Typically a route around the outside, a center arena and a few routes interlocking the two. The maps sometimes have their gimmicks (usually pits of death).
The reason for this being?
All of the maps must support all of the game modes. Yup, you read that correctly. None of the maps are designed with a specific game mode in mind. With the DLC there are a total of 15 maps, but honestly it feels more like 2–3 with different skins on them.
With so many maps and so little to talk about I’m not going to go over them, but rather go over the maps I disliked the most.
Empyrian
This map has become one of my most hated not only due to the massive amount of sightlines that encourage a lot of sniper play, but also because the map likes using DOOM’s parkour mechanics (pulling yourself over the ledge). Unfortunately, I found the mechanics to be rather unpolished for this. I would often find myself missing my second double jump or my character simply wouldn’t grab the ledge giving me an unfair death. Combine this with the lack of cover, this map is easily one of my least favorites.
Helix
This map is the exclusive reason why I find domination to not be worth playing in DOOM 2016. The “B” Capture point is put on the low ground between two high grounds where players can spam grenades down below to the poor saps trying to capture the point. Additionally there are two entries on both the left and the right, one of which has quite long sightlines. Absolute misery on this map.
That’s generally about it when it comes to the maps. Due to them not having original layouts or unique mechanics, there simply isn’t a lot to talk about here, other than the fact that all of the maps are very small and even with just 6v6, rounds of team deathmatch especially can feel like you’re on a 64 player de_dust2 server.
Servers
DOOM 2016 Multiplayer uses servers hosted exclusively by Bethesda. These servers cannot be modified or influenced by players other than a rudimentary voting system.
There are no community servers. There are private matches, but they do not give achievements and require at least 4 players for the match to start. If you do not have many friends, you will have a rough time playing private matches.
DOOM’s multiplayer purposefully hides the ping behind opaque “ping bars” which are of course meaningless.
In my personal opinion, I believe this is to cover up for the abysmally low tickrate on these servers. You will often find yourself unexpectedly dying from weapons you never heard being fired well after you’ve gone behind a wall. This is especially frustrating as many weapons are very high damage.
The voting system especially hurts the game. If you wish to play a mode that isn’t exclusively team deathmatch, you are stuck with a large loop of possible modes that players vote on in the lobby after the game is finished. The voting takes about 15 seconds and most players do not vote. You cannot reroll the voting. This means if your choices are between two gamemodes you do not like on the team playlist, then you’re simply shit out of luck.
Thankfully, the rounds are mostly short (except for clan arena/infernal ball), so your misery only needs to last a few minutes, but it’s a problem that simply shouldn’t exist. What’s worse is that this only exacerbates the problem of the poor map selection — to play user created maps you must play on snapmap (which has a different XP system, a different playlist and doesn’t allow users to get achievements). Which is completely stupid.
The game features absolutely no auto-team balancing. Meaning you could be playing an entire round like this…
Weapons
The game has very few weapons. The balance doesn’t seem exactly bad per se, but it certainly isn’t what I would consider remarkable either. One thing to note is that the overwhelming majority of players I’ve played with have chosen to use only the weapons available in the campaign (pistol, shotgun, double barrel, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, heavy assault rifle) and not any of the additions such as the Hellshot, Reaper, Burst Rifle, Static Rifle. Though many did appreciate the grenade launcher quite a bit.
Personally I found the reaper to be useful at times, but ultimately not very fulfilling to fire. The sound effect wasn’t very good and the firing animation didn’t have much “kick” to it. The burst fire mode felt very weak, especially. The charged up mode was good, but it slowed down your movement even further.
The hellshot I could never quite figure out. It’s akin to a single shot rifle. The alt fire mode would put your enemies on fire.
The loadout system has more or less crippled this game severely. The fact that a player can spawn with a grenade launcher or a rocket launcher means that many of the weapons have been tamed down considerably and aren’t terribly fun to use all the time. In my 40 hours I’ve yet to find an objectively better weapon, nor is there a weapon I find completely useless either. Instead there’s just not much notable here since they all need to be more more or less equal since any new player can spawn with them.
Equipment
Equipment is a single slot where you can equip a variety of items. Your choices include a frag grenade, a short range teleport, a pulse you can emit occasionally that reveals locations of enemies (also shows them through walls for a short period), a health stealing grenade, a short term wall, a hologram, a tesla rocket (throwable that electrocutes nearby enemies), a mine and a threat sensor.
However the usability of most equipment just simply wasn’t there.
The Tesla Rocket was a very popular choice among players, including myself, because it is a strong damage dealer.
Lateral thrusters give you more movement (this is the only way to get any actual change to your movement btw, there is no bunnyhop or even rocket jumping in this game).
Hologram, personal teleporter, threat pulse, threat sensor and shield wall are all fairly garbage.
The kinetic mine can be very powerful if placed correctly.
Sound
The incredible soundtrack that DOOM was praised for is completely absent from the game. Except for the lobby screen. Yup.
The sound often cuts out and the announcer is completely awful. They sound like Raycevick with absolutely no power. Even worse he will often talk over himself in a more hectic match which causes his volume to go up. Which makes him sound distorted. It’s fine though. The rest of the sound design is bad.
The game has no idea about the existence of walls when doing sound, so you’ll be hearing gunshots from the room next to you as if they’re right next to you. A fantastic problem for a game where most of your deaths will be you getting shot from behind.
Visuals
I’m not sure how else to put this. In theory DOOM multiplayer is gorgeous. The maps are intricately detailed, with many shiny textures but the game has horrible visuals. And by that I don’t mean graphical quality. There’s a lot that goes into proper design for a multiplayer shooter, and DOOM was hellbent on making sure to not follow these at all. To explain I’m going to use Team Fortress 2 as an example because it does it very well.
Each character has a distinct silhouette which stands out from the background most of the time. Even the silhouettes for the weapons they have equipped are different (how they are holding them, etc). Valve took special care in making sure that enemies “popped” from the map to allow players to more easily spot them. Even from a distance you know what is an enemy, what they have equipped and much more.
Now let’s compare this to a screenshot I took in DOOM.
The enemies do not pop out, especially here where they blend into the red outline on the sector. While you most certainly will be able to identify them after examining the screenshot, the goal of good visual design is to allow the player to do so immediately. DOOM’s solution to this poor visual design is to instead include a filter on all enemy players that makes them standout as red. You cannot change this color.
However, many of the maps are covered in red and at a distance the shader does absolutely nothing. Try figuring out where the enemy is in this screenshot quickly.
The HUD (heads-up display, the visuals that tell you information about your ammo, score and health) is also very cluttered with many little animations and little award pops up constantly appearing. You can lower the opacity of the HUD, however you cannot shrink the HUD to be smaller, so if you have a large monitor your health bar is very much out of the way. The opacity of the HUD has a floor of 25%, so you can never make it truly invisible and many elements completely ignore the opacity slider anyways. Useless feature.
Player Customization/Progression
This section reflects update 6.66 which revamped the progression system in DOOM’s MP. The change allowed for what is effectively prestiging in Call of Duty, but called Echelon. It’s a pretty fair system, each level requires only 5,000 XP and going up an echelon doesn’t relock unlockables or anything. That I am perfectly okay with. Instead the problem comes with the way that id Software redesigned it.
You see, you unlock additional cosmetics as you continue to level up. This is in stark contrast to the previous system where you got cosmetics randomly.
Oh and the game has achievements associated with these cosmetics. You’ll need to equip one piece of Robotic armor and one piece of Cyber-Demonic armor. The catch being, Robotic armor doesn’t unlock until Echelon 6 and Cyber-Demonic armor doesn’t unlock until Echelon 10. Echelon 10 taking roughly 20–40 hours. Meaning it is now the hardest achievement for this game. For no reason.
However the problem comes from the fact that there are two ways to unlock the same cosmetics. Either by leveling up or by completing certain challenges. What happens when you’ve already unlocked it? Absolutely nothing. You get nothing. There is an alternative and slightly faster way of getting the Cyber-Demonic armor. This will allow you to unlock it at a measly Echelon 8. But no earlier. You see, they decided to lock those challenges away until you were a high enough level even though the challenges are neither difficult nor require anything at that echelon level. It’s just done to force you to grind more.
Also the cosmetics are fucking hideous.
I’m not really sure what most players aim for, but it almost always looks like shit. You can choose colors, but it ultimately means very little. You cannot control saturation or tweak colors to exactly what you want or even customize weapons very much. Oh and the patterns are all fucking awful as well.
Overall a waste of your fucking time.
Gameplay
This is what everything has been building up to. Everything before (and more!) are about to meld into what can only be described as the full DOOM 2016 experience.
As I explained earlier, loadouts in particular have harmed this game considerably. Not having players explore the map or maintain control means that there is rarely any progress. The “power weapons” such as the BFG and Gauss Cannon are announced too shortly before they spawn. There is rarely a fight over it unless the map is very small or the point is near it.
Demons play a fairly minor role. In fact I found them to mostly just be an annoyance, since you’re going to die in a single hit if they see you and they have a huge chunk of HP. If your team is good they aren’t much of a threat, otherwise they’re an annoyance you’ll want to avoid.
The majority of your deaths, will be from you getting shot in the back because the maps are so small and there are only a few routes, especially if the game mode is team deathmatch and there is no where for players to go. The TTK (time-to-kill) is so short that you have absolutely no time to react unless the player has engaged at the worst possible moment.
The melee system will teleport you a short distance if you’re close enough to deal damage. Sometimes it will perform a glory kill, but sometimes it won’t. There doesn’t appear to be a reason why.
Most combat scenarios where you do face someone head on will involve both players constantly jumping and trying to land shots on (or near) the enemy player. Lateral Jets (the equipment item) can help change up this ever so slightly, but an engagement like this tends to be more random and dependent on you landing the most pellets/bullets in their other person’s soon-to-be corpse.
Oh and DOOM 2016’s MP does introduce an old concept, a quite horrid one that many of us wished to never see. Kill-stealing. It’s the concept that you’re dealing a ton of damage to an enemy, say you’ve taken them down to 1 HP. Then another teammate comes in and deals that last damage. They get the kill and you get nothing. Well DOOM 2016 doesn’t necessarily always give you nothing. Instead, you’ll get a measly 15 points. And yes, it’s always 15 points. So it doesn’t matter if you dealt 9 damage or 99. You’re only getting 15 points compared to the 100 that you would get if you got the kill. Sometimes though the game will just decide you simply didn’t do enough and you’ll get no points. If you’re in a group of three and all of you deal damage, only one will get 100 points, another will get 15 points (for the assist) and the last will get nothing. Excellent game design. This is especially great when your only focus is getting the achievement.
Oh and a lot of challenges are based exclusively off of killing, so you’re also being denied any progress on them as well.
Conclusion
My time with the multiplayer has been truly unpleasant and reminded me why I hate most modern multiplayer games that focus more on being “competitive” rather than actually being fun. The majority of DOOM’s multiplayer is derivative of other, better titles and manages to show how hollow most of these mechanics are when you look at them slightly deeper. My experience has been mostly silent rooms with no one talking or even using the text chat. I could’ve been playing with bots the majority of the time and never would’ve known. The maps are all unmemorable and aside from recreating a childhood game of Freeze Tag this game has nothing of value to gain from it. I’m not even sure if that’s a new thing or just some game mode of Halo or Call of Duty.
It’s funny how I can go back and play Half-Life 1’s deathmatch on GoldSrc and still have a lot of fun just playing with people on the same server. I don’t have to play game modes I don’t like. We can all chat together, friend or foe, rather than only communicating with our teammates and we can shit talk each other until we’re blue in the face. With DOOM’s MP you can do absolutely none of that. The best you can do is an empty shitty “taunt” gesture animation that looks like crap because your DOOM guy variant is covered head to toe in rigid steel armor that isn’t flexible. But haha, you can dab when you kill someone. HUMILIATION.
