Doom Eternal's core loop is badly explained

[SquirrelSaysNuts]

Wow at the condescension here. You would think a gaming board would be more interested in game design and the improvement of tutorials but apparently not.

What? Pip has been the term for that sort of UI/gameplay element for ages. Its like complaining that a game doesn't explain what a hit point is.

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I have never encountered the term in any game, video or article about games ever or for that matter in any media outside of games so it's definitely not common enough to use in a tutorial.

 

[tacocat]

doom 16 is like an all you can eat buffet and Eternal is like... you have to tear down five layers of brick wall to get to a world class cuisine

if that makes sense. eternal is definitely worth it but if you're a bit rusty with muscle memory it can get pretty woof

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Hahaha - yeah that makes some sense. I should pick it up again and give it another go. I just wrapped up Hades and have nothing new to play until Demons Souls remake and Cyberpunk. I wonder how much it is on steam right now...

 

[Lobster Roll]

As I had played the first game so much I just didn't bother reading the chainsaw tutorial because I thought I knew how it worked.

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I mean ... this is like a confession haha

 

[-Tetsuo-]

It's fun how control scheme elitism is retroactively convincing people that Doom 2016 isn't a phenomenal game.

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I never said it wasn't?

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Wow at the condescension here. You would think a gaming board would be more interested in game design and the improvement of tutorials but apparently not.

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Just because it's in the game, doesn't make this a game design issue.

The normal reaction is to laugh it off and say "my bad I missed that one line in the tutorial lol" , and not making a whole thread proclaiming how it totally isn't my fault and that it's the game developers who made a mistake.

 

[808s & Villainy]

Wow at the condescension here. You would think a gaming board would be more interested in game design and the improvement of tutorials but apparently not.

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And how exactly do you improve tutorials that users will skip? Make them unskippable and piss off people who already know?

 

[Zyae]

Wow at the condescension here. You would think a gaming board would be more interested in game design and the improvement of tutorials but apparently not.


I have never encountered the term in any game, video or article about games ever or for that matter in any media outside of games so it's definitely not common enough to use in a tutorial.

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OP literally admitted to just skipping the pretty clear tutorial

 

[Deleted member 2809]

And how exactly do you improve tutorials that users will skip? Make them unskippable and piss off people who already know?

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Shout mcdonalds in your mic to confirm you've read the tutorial

 

[Alek]

I felt that the tutorials were pretty good in my experience of the game, but I don't remember them all that well. I managed to get to grips with everything quickly though.

I think Eternal is a really excellent game on the whole.

 

[Pyke Presco]

Not gonna lie; I was also unaware of this fact. Having played 2016 earlier this year, when the tutorial popped up I read the first line which was like "use your chainsaw to get more health and ammo" at which point I was like "yeah, just like the last game. Got it". Also, three charges on the chainsaw, three enemies in the tutorial room. Seems like a no brainer to me that I can use this thing three times before it runs out. That's what intuitive game experience would indicate to me. A 4th enemy in the room would have clearly demonstrated the fact you have to wait a bit for it to recharge. Or the tutorial box popping up after you've used it three times with a quick tooltip saying "when you're out of fuel, the first pip will refill over time." Never bothered to actually read the whole thing, never bothered to look at my fuel after using it three times until I found a gascan, etc. Assumption on my part based on this being a sequel with largely the same gameplay, so I wasn't expecting any drastic changes in the core loop.

Also, I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I can barely read the text on my tv when sitting on my couch. So playing doom(or any shooter, really) for me just boils down to "shoot stuff until it's dead, find the glowing thing to activate and move forwards"; I'm not gonna bother reading anything until the game puts in a UI that is visible further than two feet from the screen.

Probably gonna be a lot more liberal with the chainsaw use when I boot it up again. Thanks for the PSA, OP!

 

[A Strong Latte]

I mean, how do you even tutorialize something like this coherently without telling the player outright?

Lock them in a room with 2 imps and only the chainsaw? Play an animation after the first chainsaw kill demonstrating the suit refilling the chainsaw fuel?

 

[Rubblatus]

This is one of those things that would be a bigger issue if it wasn't for the fact that chainsaw fuel refills too quickly to ever be a real issue in moment to moment gameplay. I can see some players overthinking it and prioritizing in-game pick-ups or fuel cannisters before they even attempt to go for the chainsaw kill, but in my experience I'd just run out of ammo, chainsaw something because I had no other options and keep right on trucking in the early game.

The bigger issue for me was understanding that your chainsaw always used your consumable pips over your refillable one, which meant I almost never had enough fuel for a three-pip chainsaw kill.

 

[QisTopTier]

This is one of those things that would be a bigger issue if it wasn't for the fact that chainsaw fuel refills too quickly to ever be a real issue in moment to moment gameplay. I can see some players overthinking it and prioritizing in-game pick-ups or fuel cannisters before they even attempt to go for the chainsaw kill, but in my experience I'd just run out of ammo, chainsaw something because I had no other options and keep right on trucking in the early game.

The bigger issue for me was understanding that your chainsaw always used your consumable pips over your refillable one, which meant I almost never had enough fuel for a three-pip chainsaw kill.

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For me on Nightmare I treated it like an invlunerability button or gap closer :D So it got used almost asap

 

[lazygecko]

The bigger issue for me was understanding that your chainsaw always used your consumable pips over your refillable one, which meant I almost never had enough fuel for a three-pip chainsaw kill.

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Oh yeah, this was a major issue for me as well since it was never explained in the game just how that worked. So without understanding the nuance of the mechanics, it felt like counter-intuitive design that was punishing me for considering to use the chainsaw specifically for oneshot killing harder enemies. And so I ended up feeling very apprehensive about ever using the chainsaw because I wanted to keep all 3 pips as insurance.

On that same note, the whole thing with tying blood punch to the same button prompt as glory kills didn't sit well with me at all. I often ended up wasting my blood punch charge by mistake because in the heat of the moment it didn't feel 100% clear which action was going to take priority.

 

[Astral]

For me on Nightmare I treated it like an invlunerability button or gap closer :D So it got used almost asap

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Hey man, using the chainsaw like that was not the game's intention.

 

[noinspiration]

I suck so bad at this game that I don't even survive long enough to have this issue 😑

 

[QisTopTier]

Hey man, using the chainsaw like that was not the game's intention.

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Sure it is. It wouldn't teleport me 15 feet and make me immune to damage otherwise. Using it like that also guarantees I never had ammo problems for any weapon combo I wanted to do either.

 

[A Strong Latte]

Sure it is. It wouldn't teleport me 15 feet and make me immune to damage otherwise. Using it like that also guarantees I never had ammo problems for any weapon combo I wanted to do either.

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They also wouldn't have a rune that increases glory kill range if they didn't want people to use the chainsaw and glory kills as a mobility option.

I want them to hide a secret behind using a caco glory kill to jump to a high space 👿

 

[QisTopTier]

They also wouldn't have a rune that increases glory kill range if they didn't want people to use the chainsaw and glory kills as a mobility option.

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Glory kill range rune plus move speed up after glory kill = vroom vroom!

I want them to hide a secret behind using a caco glory kill to jump to a high space 👿

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Would be a fun one to figure out. We'll have to settle on chaining caco glory kills with the super shotgun alt fire around the arena like an off brand ps2 shinobi for now tho :P

 

[flyinj]

OP literally admitted to just skipping the pretty clear tutorial

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I read the first three lines which explained the exact functionality of the chainsaw in the previous game then closed it without reading the vital fourth line.

A lot of people in this thread did the exact same thing.

 

[SquirrelSaysNuts]

And how exactly do you improve tutorials that users will skip? Make them unskippable and piss off people who already know?

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You make them a part of the game itself. Others have already presented excellent ideas of how to highlight the fact that the chainsaw recharges. There is a reason why Super Mario's world 1-1 is so celebrated. It's because it teaches the game through gameplay without telling the player anything. Doom Eternal had only to put the player (only armed with the chainsaw) in a room with 4 useless enemies. After having killed 3 enemies, the game would highlight the recharging chainsaw meter.

Just because it's in the game, doesn't make this a game design issue.

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Explaining your game's rules through gameplay is an essential part of game design.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Explaining your game's rules through gameplay is an essentiel part of game design.

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The OP didn't read a single specific line in the tutorial of four lines.

It happens, we're all humans. We'll mess up occasionally/all the time.

Trying to make this into a game design failure discussion is silly.

 

[SquirrelSaysNuts]

The OP didn't read a single specific line in the tutorial of four lines.

It happens, we're all humans. We'll mess up occasionally/all the time.

Trying to make this into a game design failure discussion is silly.

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Presenting lines of text to explain a key concept in your game is not ideal. Sometimes there is no way around it, but most of the time, you can explain using gameplay. Excellent ideas of how to improve this particular tutorial has already been presented by others in this thread.

 

[-Amon-]

A lot of people did not get th chainsaw ammo refill thing. My guess is they are all Doom 2016 players that were really excited to play Eternal, so they did not pay attention to the tutorial. It's their fault but when so many people fail at learning a new mechanic then there must be something wrong in the game.

My guess is that you should never change a core mechanic in a sequel, expecially if the change is explained in the first minutes of the game. That is the moment where the player is the most eager to play and usually the moment where he is the most bombarded by info / tutorials.

 

[Deleted member 46804]

Presenting lines of text to explain a key concept in your game is not ideal. Sometimes there is no way around it, but most of the time, you can explain using gameplay. Excellent ideas of how to improve this particular tutorial has already been presented by others in this thread.

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So much this. Especially when people just aren't used to having to read text tutorials. There's an expectation that the game will show you what it needs to in an interactive way and 99% of the time there's no reason for this not to happen.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Presenting lines of text to explain a key concept in your game is not ideal. Sometimes there is no way around it, but most of the time, you can explain using gameplay. Excellent ideas of how to improve this particular tutorial has already been presented by others in this thread.

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Have you seen that line?

 

[Cantona222]

Thank you OP. I'm about 4 hours into the game and didn't notice that the Chainsaw auto refills. Hopefully I'll enjoy the rest of the game more.

 

[StrappingYoungLance]

Have you seen that line?

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Is it there? That's a lot of words to read.

 

[Mary Celeste]

Just read the on-screen text and you won't have a problem. Going online and complaining about it the game's design because you refused to read the info it presented you is just embarrassing.

 

[SquirrelSaysNuts]

Have you seen that line?

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Yes. But again, presenting lines of text to explain a key concept in your game is not ideal. It's not that Doom Eternal is a bad game because of this or that players who read all four lines are brilliant geniuses because they manage but as a game developer, you want to remove friction from players enjoying your game as intended. From the responses in this thread, there are quite a few who didn't get it the first time around. Game developers would like to get 100% of their customers to understand their game. The suggestions in this thread for improvement would probably get them there.

 

[Hogendaz85]

The problem with this game was that for every new enemy type there was a specific method of killing said enemy that had a tutorial to demonstrate. It got annoying, huge step down from 2016

 

[A Strong Latte]

Have you seen that line?

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See, it's their fault they didn't bold slowly refuels over time. Those fucking amatuers at id

 

[GTVision]

Because of this thread I learned that the chainsaw auto fills. I didn't know this when playing through the whole game, so you can imagine my frustration playing the game, running out of bullets constantly. I loved Doom 2016 but hated Doom Eternal because of it.

So yeah, I totally agree, the game didn't explain it's core mechanics well enough.

 

[MiDoZ]

Shout mcdonalds in your mic to confirm you've read the tutorial

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I understood that reference.gif

 

[Deleted member 24118]

It's fun how control scheme elitism is retroactively convincing people that Doom 2016 isn't a phenomenal game.

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It is phenomenal. Eternal moreso.

I like how saying that Eternal is inherently better because it's designed around one control scheme is elitist, but saying that 2016 is inherently better because it's designed around a different control scheme is real salt of the earth stuff. Sorry that one of the ten trillion shooters released since 2008 plays well on a mouse.

 

[a_mad_bag_of_cats]

Yeah it auto refills and it does tell you and warps you into that virtual arena to explain it. The motion of warping you to explain it seems so wrong. Rather than set up specific enemies in places so you do it in the level / encounter instead.
I kinda missed it too but mostly because I have old-man eyes and could barely read half the instructions/tutorials I got.
That and the UI has too much going on for it to even indicate it - or for the eye to discern such a thing has happened like it refilling.
Pretty sure I am about 3/4 into eternal and I'm still getting stuff explained to me in game

 

[Akibared]

TIL the chainsaw auto refills

 

[A Strong Latte]

The "you can't play eternal on a game pad" shit is nonsense. There's the slow mo rune, and copious amounts of auto aim (see, shotgun grenade launcher) and the only enemies that have precision targets to begin with are revenants and arachnotrons.

Yeah, it plays better if you have rear paddles like on an elite controller or sony's equiv but the shit is hella playable

 

[MisterAnderson]

Suddenly it's making sense how people complain about "the game having not enough ammo." From my point of view I was taking crazy pills, since the game LITERALLY gives the player infinite ammo via the chainsaw. The "fodder" enemies (zombies and low tier soldiers) are not intended to be enemies. They are placed in arenas/encounters simply as a means for the player to farm ammo ABSOLUTELY WHENEVER Doom Slayer is low on ammo.

In fact, you should always leave one of the fodder enemies alive for after all threats are taken care of so you can "top off" after every single fight.

Repeat after me:

Doom
Eternal
gives
players
infinite
ammo.

Spoiler

GOTY

 

[Dever]

Two things can be true at once... Could the chainsaw tutorial be better? Yeah. Was it also partly OP's fault for not reading the tutorial text? Also yeah.

People who didn't know the chainsaw refilled, did you really never try to chainsaw something unless you had picked up a gas canister??

 

[GTVision]

Two things can be true at once... Could the chainsaw tutorial be better? Yeah. Was it also partly OP's fault for not reading the tutorial text? Also yeah.

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Both statements are valid. I can imagine, though, that as a developer you want to make sure that all players understand the mechanics of your game, especially those around which the whole gameplay loop is designed. The fact that the gameplay loop is so different from Doom 2016, and that the one line of text which is presented to you once in the game could be easily missed, makes me think they failed in their mission to properly explain the core mechanics to their players. The fact that, seemingly, a lot of players didn't know about the autofill feature is testament to that.

 

[MisterAnderson]

The fact that, seemingly, a lot of players didn't know about the autofill feature is testament to that.

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Well, I'd wager that every player who didn't know either didn't read the entire chainsaw tutorial or skipped it altogether.

Or option c) they did read it but forgot about that detail.

I guess the game could have taken note if the player kept dying with little ammo, it could do a flashing tool tip at the chainsaw pips and say "REMEMBER! Use your chainsaw often to refill your ammo! The first pip refills automatically over time so you can use it whenever you're low on supply." or something.

 

[Marco_Tovarich]

The OP didn't read a single specific line in the tutorial of four lines.

It happens, we're all humans. We'll mess up occasionally/all the time.

Trying to make this into a game design failure discussion is silly.

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That is very literally a game design failure. Having text explaining something doesn't make it a tutorial. Key gameplay elements should be demonstrated, and dekdek already shared a much more elegant way of effectively conveying that information to the player.

 

[Stalker]

I read the first three lines which explained the exact functionality of the chainsaw in the previous game then closed it without reading the vital fourth line.

A lot of people in this thread did the exact same thing.

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and you also continually ignored the UI that shows the chainsaw refilled

 

[Dever]

Both statements are valid. I can imagine, though, that as a developer you want to make sure that all players understand the mechanics of your game, especially those around which the whole gameplay loop is designed. The fact that the gameplay loop is so different from Doom 2016, and that the one line of text which is presented to you once in the game could be easily missed, makes me think they failed in their mission to properly explain the core mechanics to their players. The fact that, seemingly, a lot of players didn't know about the autofill feature is testament to that.

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Well, it only takes like 30 seconds to refill. So 99% of your time playing Doom Eternal, the chainsaw button will look like this:

Implying there is 1 charge. And when it's not available, you can see it slowly filling in the UI. So even if you miss the text, it's entirely possible to learn it afterwards.

And in cases like this, imo it's important to have a charitable assumption of the developers. Like if something about a game I'm playing feels insanely off or broken, I'll go online to check if I'm missing something rather than assuming the game is just badly designed. Obviously running out of ammo all the time isn't fun, and the developers aren't stupid and/or incompetent, so they wouldn't design the game to be like that.

But at the same time, if a lot of players missed the tutorial text, that's something they should have caught during testing and improved the tutorial.

 

[harry the spy]

Seriously did anyone ever use the chainsaw with more than one charge semi-frequently ? It seemed it was designed to be a one charge only thing to use on fodder , why the fuck would you use like three charges on a fucking prowler.

 

[Stalker]

OP's inability to look at the UI and tutorials does not speak to any fault on the devs behalf.

 

[Tomasdk]

If people consider the tutorial messages as too much text to read, it is clear that we failed as a race lol.
The game also has an audio cue to tell the player that the chainsaw is refilled.

This trend of faulting the game for ones own mistakes is something I see a lot among streamers. They just start the game, not checking the controls or any options and then complain the the game is too hard or something when they ignore half of the game mechanics or complain about settings that can be changed via the options but they have no idea since they never bothered to check. The ammo shower is a good example, I read and saw a lot of people complain that it's too colorful and they can't see anything because of it. Well guess what, there's a loot drop brightness slider in the game options for that. Stuff like this.

 

[A Strong Latte]

Now that I know everyone that complains about this game didn't even know how to chainsaw to reload properly, I can promptly disregard all criticism about the game design being restrictive.

I'm also gonna presume that you assholes are the reason every enemy in the game has a fucking tutorial popup

 

[Deleted member 2809]

Seriously did anyone ever use the chainsaw with more than one charge semi-frequently ? It seemed it was designed to be a one charge only thing to use on fodder , why the fuck would you use like three charges on a fucking prowler.

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It's good for the first mission on ultra nightmare. Those arachnotrons are nasty as fuck when you have shit weapons.