DOOM Eternal

Glory kills make health come from attacking, not hiding. There is no regenerating health: hurt players hunt health packs around the arena or run at a staggered demon to trigger a glory kill that showers health. Most of the design keeps you moving around enemies; the glory kill pulls you toward them.

In game-economy terms the glory kill is a resource tap placed on the behaviour id wants, which pushes players to punch demons in the face. The short animation also gives the player a moment to plan the next move and makes them feel like a predator picking off prey.

Heavy aim assist and loot brightness help players with motor and visual needs. DOOM Eternal offers heavy aim assistance, addressing motor needs that button remapping alone doesn't solve, and an option to adjust loot brightness so key items stand out in busy scenes.

DOOM Eternal has a high skill floor and a high skill ceiling. It withholds the demon-slayer fantasy until players master many mechanics. Compared with Spider-Man's low floor and low ceiling, each extreme locks out or underserves a group, which is why Bayonetta's mix is held up as working better.

Skill floor is the base skill needed to be effective; skill ceiling is the most skill a player can express.

An earned fantasy feels better, but many players quit first. Hugo Martin compares DOOM Eternal to climbing a mountain rather than taking the elevator. Troy Skinner of WB Games says casual players with low tolerance for suffering make up about 60% of the console market.

"If they're not masterful, they're demotivated, they walk away."

The marketing promises power the opening hours don't deliver. DOOM Eternal sells you as the strongest demon-slaying bad-ass, then basic demons beat you, which makes failure feel discordant. Skate instead casts you as a lowly amateur, matching its steep learning curve.

"If a game wants to make us earn the fantasy, it needs to explain that up front."

Weapons and enemies arrive gradually across the campaign. Rather than front-loading complexity, DOOM Eternal introduces its weapons and enemies over time, stretching the learning curve the way Ori and other Metroidvanias hand out upgrades.

The Marauder drew complaints about taste, not bugs. Ars Technica called him "by far the most frustrating part of any encounter" and Vice said he "sucks all the fun out of the room." He fires a shotgun up close, throws projectiles from afar, and in the middle ground blocks with a shield and spawns a wolf, so you must counter his pounce when his eyes flash green.

Mark Brown argues he annoys players because he clashes with DOOM's own design goals, and that demands to remove him ask for a change in taste rather than a fix.

The fault may lie in how the Marauder is introduced. His tutorial skips the strategies that make fights with him far less frustrating, so the problem may be the onboarding rather than the enemy itself.

Feedback should be read as a clue to a deeper problem, not a fix to apply; Nioh director Fumihiko Yasuda says feedback should generate questions for developers, not solutions.

Forum anger can overstate how many players dislike a mechanic. Frustrated players speak up far more than indifferent ones, which skews how widespread the Steam forum hatred of the Marauder looks. Vocal critics also tend to want harder games, which can alienate casual fans who never visit forums.

Insomniac's Ryan Schneider says Resistance 2 suffered from listening too intently to a small noisy group: "just because you see it online and you see it in the forums, that doesn't necessarily represent the majority viewpoint."

Drop the genre conventions that push players into cover. Doom (2016) has almost no aim down sights, makes you as accurate running as standing, and lets you strafe as fast as you run, so shooting never costs speed. DOOM Eternal keeps this approach, dropping aim down sights, regenerating health and hitscan so fights stay fast.

Mark Brown argues most FPS campaigns have reused the same blueprint for a decade: aim down sights, slow strafing, hitscan, regenerating health and reloading all push players to retreat. "id forcefully rejected just about every piece of shooter design that has been employed to slow this genre down."

Slow, dodgeable projectiles reward movement over hiding. Hitscan hurts you the instant an enemy fires, which pushes players behind walls. Doom's demons fire slow physical projectiles that players can read and weave around while orbiting them.

Glory kills make health come from attacking, not hiding. There is no regenerating health: hurt players hunt health packs around the arena or run at a staggered demon to trigger a glory kill that showers health. Most of the design keeps you moving around enemies; the glory kill pulls you toward them.

In game-economy terms the glory kill is a resource tap placed on the behaviour id wants, which pushes players to punch demons in the face. The short animation also gives the player a moment to plan the next move and makes them feel like a predator picking off prey.

Players only play boldly if the systems reward it. Without incentives, players pick the safest and most boring option. Doom uses glory kills to reward aggression, while Titanfall 2 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare offer wall-running yet still get played from behind walls and boxes.

"Otherwise, they'll more likely play it in the most safe and boring way possible."

Give each demon a distinct behaviour that demands a different response. The Revenant fires missiles, the Cacodemon floats in to bite, one demon charges like a quarterback, and the pinky has a front shield, so you wait for its charge to pass and shoot its back. Players must prioritise, such as dodging pinkies while killing a hell razer or summoner first.

A varied arsenal turns each fight into a speed puzzle. Every weapon is carried at once via a radial menu that slows but does not stop the action. The assault rifle needles and interrupts enemies, the shotgun works up close, the rocket launcher is deadly but risky, and the chainsaw kills in one hit and showers ammo but runs out of fuel fast.

"Juggling guns and enemies is something of a puzzle."

Mix a few enemies with varied layouts to get endless encounters. A double jump, easy ledge clambering and chaining a jump into a glory kill add verticality to the arenas. Combining different enemies with different layouts lets id "cobble together an infinite number of combat encounters" from limited parts.

Slow side content between fights breaks the intensity. Exploration, so-so platforming and collectible hunting between battles send the game's intensity "from 11 to 0 in painful, whiplash fashion," and the core loop still turns repetitive.

Mark Brown compares collectibles and upgrade trees to chores, like shooting 100 pigeons in Grand Theft Auto IV.