Let's help the guys at id finding the focus.

What are the key features you expect to see in a Doom game?

Multiple choice is strictly allowed so choose wisely!
Otherwise this poll won't help to set the focus.

Great soundtrack. Excellent gunplay. Superb, horrific death animations for demons. I want every demon to die differently. Wide wide open spaces with hordes everywhere. Infighting between demons. Gore gore gore. Graphic sounding and looking gibs from explosions. Rage did a great job. Make sure the imps fireballs are fast. Focus of this game should be for the category HORROR ARCADE.

I want the game to make me wanna shoot things in real life.

What drew me into the Doom universe was the ability to explore the depths of hell!

It was the surreal atmosphere that gave me the creeps and made me ask myself if i was just playing a game or having a nightmare.

Gameplaywise i always loved the good balance between total silence when you were slowly progressing through a map and suddenly all hell braking loose.
Experience always turned totally intense when resources were low and you were searching for that final healthpack to get you through the map...

The perfect example for what i think is Doom: Map 28 "Monster Condo" in Doom II.

Good gunplay and enemy interaction is also a must but i guess id won't have any problems with that.
Rage was perfect in that respect.

I would agree but the AI was nothing special, a bit dumb in fact. The attack animations were good and the gunplay very good but the monsters/people were not a challenge.

'good' AI is killing shooters, it turns fun action packed combat into a war of attrition behind cover. Keep that nonsense for CoD and its clones

Another "fun packed action" guy. Hi ho. CoD is a game I have never played or wanted too. I come from Stalker, the best video games ever made. A very deadly place, you would not like it. It in no way makes you feel like a hero, the opposite in fact.

So in your book inaccurate and stupid is what you want, so you can kill them and have fun without much of a challenge.

That is well described by "dumb". No wonder id is toast.

Yeah because the STALKER series done so well

Better than Rage.

Still that you even say that reveals your prejudice. The fact that a game may be the best ever made means very little to you, just how much money it made.

Again, this is how id is failing. Following the money is not working well for id.

No it doesn't. Good AI doesn't mean "chest-high wall coverfest".

STALKER being best video games ever? I lol'ed. Two words: Deus Ex.

LOL. Ok we disagree.

To me Rage is a better game than S.T.A.L.K.E.R but they aren't even the same kind of game, the just both happen to have guns. The entire S.T.A.L.K.E.R series didn't sell as well as Rage and GSC Game World is essentially shuttered, it ruined them with the majority of their staff leaving to found Vostok games and working on Survarium (a free to play mmofps) and 4A Games (The Metro Series)

A game failing to find an audience big enough to keep the studio open is kind of telling that while you might think it's the best game ever made, the majority of gamers disagree. Obviously me not thinking Stalker is the best game ever is down to my prejudice because you're obviously the guy who gets to decide which game is the best for everyone

Because id released one game that wasn't as big as Doom or Quake id are failing? Not many development houses have ever released games as big as those series and Rage did manage to shift a few million units and review well.

Rage sold more than Doom or Quake. It didn't sell as much as Doom 3, but at close to 3 million it would be somewhere between id's second and fourth highest selling title. Don't believe the "Rage tanked" crew.

Of course, it also had significantly higher development costs (and significantly longer development time) than either Doom or Quake too.

The AI for Rage is perfect for a Doom game, let's please not make demons behave like military strategists, that would be some serious bull.
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What makes Doom?
The shotguns, the demons, the BFG, the variety in awesome music (not just metal!), the abstracted hellish atmosphere! For me, Doom is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9BI-XBk48.

But there is always room for improvement. Honestly I need some sort of story telling, which is what you finally did in Doom3, even if the gameplay was done wrong

Edit: Oh, but none of that keycard nonsense in Doom4 please, that only went well with the cartoony classics

Very strange. Stalker sold quite a bit on more on PC. Obviously there were no console games on consoles.

I get to decide? Ummm I am in a small minority that meets opposition from everyone but those who have actually played the game. Very many game reviewers are very impressed by Stalker. The New York Review of Books recently penned a review of a book they claimed should have paid some attention to Stalker:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/01/zone-chernobyl-tarkovsky-video-game/

Rage is not in the same class. Not even close.

Yeah, you know what, I've beaten the original STALKER and I liked it, but I'm not in the league with you.

Lemme tell you more, it isn't even in the same genre, nor does it try or need to be.

DOOM got great totally unreal/surreal atmosphere (all places looks totally non-realisitic, and I love it). About AI in DOOM - I like it! Human soldiers are possessed (they are not zombies ) - they can't think like normal humans, they can't even run, cause they are navigated by evil power In DOOM you got many places that are not must be to visit to finish the level, but I like to explore it. Cinematics movies? - no, what for By the way for example in Dead Space I like short cinematics, in DOOM 3 maybe too, but I totally dont want it in DOOM 2 (for example in some mods etc.). More about AI - I don't want DOOM 4 looks like Serious Sam - this is big hord wave mode, everyone with scream on mouth run to kill you (at DOOM 1/2 they can't run, they walks ) For example I like hord wave mod in skulltag but I have a choice (many choice - DM, CTF, Survival, hord waves etc.) and this is good. I don't like cat-jumping Imp in DOOM 3, I like slow moving old good brown imp from DOOM 1/2 - they strength is in pack. I love enter to some place and see 15 pink demons running to me (yes they can run ) and groups imps standing at some high placed wall cages, cacodemons flying around and at the long distance arachnotrons fighting with hellknights - yeah - I like it! I like AI in RAGE - even in there you got stupid monsters like mutants which runs with scream on you, and bandits which hidding, and heavy units which don't need any cover - and this is good. You are talking about STALKER here guys, ha ha, I'm veteran of STALKER, at old good times I was playing on hardest mode and killing bloodsvckers with only knife, of course last level in clear sky on hardest settings it was like a torn i ass, and you need shoot 2-3 magazines of pistol for headshot (why, why!?), but I like this game very much cause the atmosphere and places to explore (hmm I must to reinstal it ).

Let's try to stay focused on Doom.

Talking about ai in Doom:
As much as i love to see improved ai in games, i doubt that Doom would be the right game to show off with this.

We're not talking about trained Spec Ops teams here as enemies, we're talking about demons.
Demons who are closer to animals in terms of behaviour than humans!

Some form of group behaviour would be nice though.
In general, Doom's bad guys were always attacking in groups or just had superior firepower so there's room for improvement.

But that's as far as i would go with "animal intelligence".

Btw.: It seems like bad ai in games is not as unrealistic as one might think.
Real humans do strange and illogical things in real firefights due to the adrenaline rush.
This even applies to trained personnel.

As for keycards: Searching for keycards in every map (like in the original Dooms) would feel kind of stupid and repetitive.
But giving different objectives that force the player to find something different each map could be an option.
Finding in this case means real searching and not being led to the object by an all knowing arrow...

If the map was a military base, ship or space station, then I would expect key cards, and would find a lack of them a bit disturbing. Even Fallout had key-cards in locations that used them and did require them to open electronic locks. Key cards are annoying, but annoyance is a fact of life, and so are security doors.

I think Doom 3 handled key hunt pretty well.

Keycard hunting serves a purpose; it's a way of controlling progress through the map, a way of preventing access to later areas (which may have more powerful beasties) until you've cleared earlier ones. It also opens up possibilities for the speedrunning mob to find shortcuts, unconventional routes, trick jumps, etc. Thing is - for all the moaning and griping you see about modern linear shooters, old-school was also quite linear in it's own way, with keycards being used to funnel you through the intended route in a map. Look at something like the Necropolis in Quake, for instance; it's actually quite a linear map because the Gold Key door blocks progress until you've completed the previous areas (with two routes to the key itself, but only one way back and one of those routes to the key is a route you have to take to the door anyway), and from there there's really only one way to go.

Personally I prefer a good honest keycard hunt that's open about what it is to something dressed up to look, smell and taste different but which - when you peel off the layers - is really just a keycard hunt underneath it all.

I like them too, I'd prefer either straight up keycards or the codes and pda's like Doom 3 over masking them with pointless actions and objectives. I know it's more gamey but it just doesn't bother me as much as "Oh no this door is powered down, you must find the power generator and activate it to proceed" they're still the exact same thing only one isn't pretending to be something it isn't. It isn't an objective to activate a generator it's the same nonsense everyone has done a million times before, go to a specific spot and press x. Just stick with keycards or something similar and then at least the player knows to look out for them before they even reach the locked door.

If I follow you correctly, you think it is better to have the game mechanics exposed than to try to create a plausible game reason for whatever herding you are doing to your players.

I guess this is why id cannot make a game a lot of people enjoy anymore. Many of us are used to a bit story to cover the bones of the engine, these days. I guess part of the problem is that id is pretty small and creating actual situations with useful game progression methods take up quite a bit more art, resources and imagination than just putting a key somewhere.

I understand you do not think immersion is important but it seems just lazy to me.

I just don't see why a game should have to hide it's mechanics as if it's ashamed of them, people that think this is a necessity should grow up and accept that they're playing a video game

Carmack's [stated] philosophy about story in games is they are 'not that important'; IMO this is true for any game that is not expressly about the story itself. Zuma needs no story; Smash TV needs no story; Doom doesn't really need a story, it just needs the next encounter, and /or the next big boss. IMO over-concentration on the story would be a detriment. The more story elements, the more aspects and events to keep in mind... the less frenetic gameplay you'll have ~and that's bad for a game series like Doom IMO.