The (user) experience of Doom Eternal
According to Wikipedia, “flow is a mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”
Doom Eternal pushes the experience of ‘Flow’ above anything else. The game finds new ways to put player empowerment into overdrive.
Here are the different principles of user experience that promote and keep the player in a state of flow.
Feedback
More than most media, games engage the mechanism of feedback — several times a second often. Compared to Doom 2016, in Doom Eternal there are a lot more enemies attacking you at any given time. Feedback is critical for real-time tactic switching and resource management. Doom Eternal provides the player with several feedback cues in order to make them demon-slaying badasses.
Audio Cues
Here are a few of the audio cues in Doom Eternal:
- Destroying enemy weakpoints.
- Headshot pops and explosions.
- Health pickups and armor pickups from flame belch.
- Less common but no less important — the sound when a cyberdemon (aka tyrant) is in the vicinity and attacking you — extremely important to dodge the laser blast and rockets.
They are all very distinct, short and instantly recognizable. Most of them are also accompanied by suitably memorable and funny visuals. And this is what makes them so unique — not only do they provide reinforcement, they also promote skill progression. And this is how the truly skilled players are made in the battle arena.
Destructible Demons
Doom 2016’s bigger demons could feel like bullet sponges — those dreaded enemies that soak up a lot of ammo while simply refusing to die. Doom Eternal fixes this with destructible demons. The more damaged they are, the more vulnerable they look.
While other games have had similar mechanics before, they have often been limited to bigger enemies and boss fights. By making every enemy type destructible, the game provides a real-time health bar for every demon. Feedback and reward packed into one make this feature smarter than we might think.
Glory kills provide the balance of risk, reward and reprieve.
Glory Kills
Every Doom player knows and enjoys the terror on the faces of the demons when they are about to be glory killed. But the player is also taking on the risk of being flanked when going for a glory kill. This is such a wonderful tactical puzzle, the end result is well worth it. Combine this with the variety of kills that can be performed from various angles of approach and combat challenges based on the kills; and you have a rewarding experience to engage with. Without them the new Doom series would not be the same.
There is more to the visual and audio cues than meets the eye. They serve as mini checkpoints within a battle, maintain morale, and nudge the player to keep battling.
(Note: What I’ve Learned has already addressed the concept of feedback in games wonderfully in this video, and it was released before my essay. I was planning this around the same time. I am a subscriber of What I’ve Learned and I think you should definitely check out the other videos on the channel.)
Meathook
It is hard to recall another tool from almost any other game that combines combat, survival and platforming and makes it this much fun.
In my opinion, the meathook it still quite underrated, even after all this time since the game’s release. This is surprising given that the meathook was one of the first new features to be unveiled for Doom Eternal.
Demon coming to kill you? Meathook away and dodge. See a platform you want to get to for better positioning? Meathook. Want some armor? Use the upgraded flaming meathook. Oh, and did you know you could also fire your Super Shotgun while doing all the above?
User Interface
When Doom Eternal was first revealed there were concerns from those used to the 2016 prequel and other gamers that the new game was going for an arcade feel. And this would supposedly make the game a little too cartoony, a little too ridiculous.
However, the gameplay is so frenetic that the player hardly has any time to notice the colorful UI and the over the top aesthetics. In fact, one of the most loud user interfaces steps away into the background. Once you start playing, you actually thank the game for having the resources be big and bold— they make the difference between life and death.
Respawning and Extra Lives
Respawning in place is more than just about reducing frustration — the game is giving you the chance to not repeat your mistakes and play better.
In Doom 2016, death meant restarting from the last checkpoint. Doom Eternal adds extra lives which spawn you in the same place the you died-as long as there are lives to spare. This old idea, borrowed from classic arcade games reduces player frustration and keeps them in the battle.
When players fail at platforming no lives are taken away. Instead, the players respawn in place having lost a small portion of health. Unnecessary punishment in games can feel unfair. But Doom Eternal knows what it is — and it is focused on keeping the players engaged at all times and making them better.
The combination of the above principles makes sure players are efficient, aggressive and close to their limit at all times — put simply, they are in flow.
Peeves/1: Battlemode — Barriers of Entry and Use Case
While Doom Eternal’s campaign is focused on killing hoards of demons by yourself, Battlemode — the multiplayer mode emphasizes teamwork and cooperation. Playing as the demons is where more than half of the multiplayer experience is to be found.
Asymmetrical multiplayer games can be wonderful to play. Unfortunately, most Doom players buy the game chiefly for the single player campaign. Doom Eternal’s multiplayer is presenting an experience most of the audience simply did not ask for.
Let me explain. There is a deep and complex strategic system waiting to be discovered for those who are willing to put in the effort to master Battlemode. But this is a problem. Playing as the Slayer in Battlemode is extremely similar to the single player campaign — i.e., the barrier for entry is small. However, learning to play each demon requires time and effort- something most players are not investing currently. As such this creates unbalanced matches. One skilled player can heavily bias the odds in their (or their team’s) favor. And the current matchmaking scheme only compounds this issue.
Peeves/2: The Unmayking — Feature Creep
Let’s take a look at the special weapons in Doom Eternal:
- BFG — the original overpowered weapon that can vaporize an entire arena.
2. The Crucible — the one hit one kill energy sword (except bosses and the Marauder).
Introducing the Unmaykr into this scenario creates two big headaches:
- It could not have been a focused one hit kill weapon (there is the Crucible for that job).
- Making it a powerful Area of Effect (AOE) weapon would have just replicated the function of the Ballista and BFG.
(Honorable mention — the chainsaw, which is less of a weapon as it is a game mechanic at this point).
So, the game designers split the difference and made it a somewhat widespread, somewhat focused tool. A ‘few hits kill’ weapon if you like. Doom Eternal’s Unmaykr does not quite feel like the worthy successor to the Unmaker from Doom 64. The game even makes the Unmaykr optional; it is actually easy to forget about it.
One alternative would have been to make it a specialized, but still optional weapon to be used to gain an edge in specific boss battles —the Khan Maykr and Icon of Sin instantly come to mind (it’s in the name, after all). Something with such prominence within the Doom lore should have got a better treatment. Instead, the Unmaykr serves to highlight a problem which players and the game makers will be instinctively aware of — feature creep.
The Unmaykr is little more than a BFG mod or skin. But it serves to highlight a bigger problem — feature creep.
Far too many games which have fallen into the ‘more is more’ trap. Bigger worlds, more characters and just more of everything. But this often comes at the cost of a lack of development and differentiation. More or bigger isn’t better. Doom Eternal may have managed to mostly side step this issue. However, it does bring up the question — how will the next game manage to be fresh and unique without overwhelming the player with the amount of mechanics to keep track of? More battle arenas and fights are always welcome in any Doom game, but will they be just as good if not better?
Peeves/3: Buff Totems
Buff totems add a heaping serving of frustration to the feature creep. They do not really add any meaningful change or variety to the gameplay, but they do manage to make the players angry at the game.
From a UX point of view, if a new feature does not add anything positive to the experience, then it is a good bet that it will add something negative to it, even if not obvious. Unfortunately, buff totems add that negative quite visibly. Let’s hope they never return.
Peeves/4: Animation Excess
Animations serve as important micro-interactions, giving a sense of smoothness to the proceedings. However, when done excessively, they often distract from the experience, serving to delay the very actions they empower.
Doom Eternal has two such examples in the Fortress of Doom.
Doors opening is the first culprit. We encounter so many of them that it is inevitable to think if it would not have been better to simply have no doors at all. Perhaps this is a way of masking loading of areas, or resource management; still, it doesn’t make the feeling any better.
The second case is the usage of sentinel batteries. Players collect several of these batteries throughout the campaign. Unlocking the Doomguy costume takes 20 seconds just for the battery animation to complete.
On the other hand, acquiring the Ballista is quick while still feeling significant. Restraint would have been the better choice for both doors and batteries — one of the rare missteps in the game experience.
Peeves/5: That Robot
While the core gameplay loop is more than satisfying, just think of what it would be to control one of the Atlans, or perhaps THAT Mech in the Fortress of Doom. What if we could take on one of the titans roaming Earth in a boss fight? This would have capped off an already stellar campaign with a uniquely memorable fight.
Some might argue that the game did not need it. Yes, but neither did we ‘need’ to play as the Revenant (which was actually just an interactive advertisement for the multiplayer mode), and that turns out to be quite fun. Sometimes it is worth meeting your heroes.
Doom Eternal is not perfect. But the positive aspects of the game’s experience more than make up for the blemishes and succeed in pushing the player to the state of flow — or, as the fans call it, ‘Rip and Tear, until it is done’.
P.S: I made a YouTube video out of this essay! Check it out at the link below
