Tekhead, I'm surprised at you, I thought you would LIKE having strafe jumping in Doom being the trick jump expert you are, but I can see why you wouldn't want the level of realism disturbed.
I think strafe jumping in Doom 3 actually works out ok. Staying quiet is as important as ever in Doom 3, and clearly strafe jumping is not quiet, although its debateable whether running footsteps is louder than the marine's "oomph". Most of the time strafe jumping is not very practical, because besides the noise, it takes longer to accelerate with the D3 marine's slower starting speed, and in many areas you just end up bumping your head on some overhanging pipe or the ceiling and get screwed up. In the select areas where strafejumping is applicable, I think it provides a nice boost to gameplay. If you need to get somewhere fast, you can ramp jump up railed stairs and strafe jump across open areas faster than less knowledgeable players, at the cost of lost stealth.
My main criticism of Doom 3 right now is the lack of public servers. With only a 4 player standard limit, all fast servers are filled up all the time. Then there are the 8-12 player hacked servers which have a slightly higher chance of having an opening, but then the player load ruins the feel of the game, and it's just chaos as tons of n00bs run around blindly spaming a super cramped map with pistol and chaingun fire.
Other than that I have a few weapon nitpicks:
1) The plasma gun is way too slow. The plasma bolts seem slower than rockets! I understand the need for slower projectiles in the reduced map size of Doom 3, but it's just too much. They should be atleast 1x the speed of rockets, if not 1.5x or 2x. If the damage needs to be toned down in exchange, fine, but right now it's pretty much useless.
2) The chaingun, what's the point? It seems somewhat redundant, it's just an overpowered machinegun. Its windup delay is minimal, and while combined with the blinding smoke it makes for a somewhat substantial disadvantage (since in doom 3 you have to be ready for someone to pop out of the shadows at any second) it basically just gives n00bs something to lean on. Instead of learning to get skill with the shotgun, RL, or plasma gun, then can just spam chaingun fire and do ok. If the chaingun is really necessary, it would be nice to make it a little more like the Q2 chaingun or something.
other stuff:
-it would have been nice to have more realistic handling on the MG and the pistol, with first shot accuracy and wider spreads for rapid fire. The MG's general fire is accurate enough that it does the job fine, but I would have prefered something both more realistic and more skill intensive. Particularly without a Railgun, I think the MG could do to serve more like an assault RIFLE than a simple lead-spam-gun.
-grenades seem a little weak, It seems like often I end up hitting someone with a nade directly, and then it takes extra hits to finish them off. Maybe it's just a coincidence that in all these cases my targets had armor, but it seems a little fishy to me (especially considering half of Doom 3 players are n00bs named "Player" who don't even know how to get armor). Plus, blast radius could maybe be wider, so 'placed' explosions are more effective.
-the shotgun spread is REALLY wide. Like, it's close to being useless at anything outside of point blank range. In the close ranges of Doom 3, too small a spread would risk making it into a fuzzy rail gun, but right now you can't really say it does a 'generous pelting' at a distance. It's more like a slight prick in the ass.
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