The more I play other games the more I realize how great Rage is in all of its aspects...world, animations, upgrade system(although it could have been more elaborate), sound design, atmosphere, vehicle mechanic etc.etc.
It pretty much is one of the best FPS games out there.

Yet I don't see many people playing it and there are no new DLCs or anything?

I think the biggest mistake was having racing online mode instead of something like elaborate survival co-op mode akin to Killing Floor or L4D2. Those games are to this day extremely popular.
If that DLC would come out it would completely restore the gamem, in my opinion.

The worst thing that would happen would be classic multiplayer(players vs players) which is just dreadful because then everything is random and you just die every 10 seconds and stare at spawning screen most of the time. Such mp mode would be extremely primitive indeed.

I don't even bother with anything online anymore unless it's only co-op, like Mass Effect 3 mp for example, that is very satisfying and enjoyable online experience. co-op is the only way to go...

I would love player vs player (DM/TDM), without the spawn screens... but I think it's probably better suited for some sort of team vs team objective mode due to secondary weapon types you can build.

I really didn't find anything interesting in ME3's co-op that hadn't already been done. While I wouldn't turn down expanded co-op in RAGE, I wouldn't like to see it replace the already enjoyable co-op it has and would prefer to play other players rather than AI if a new MP mode was ever introduced. I enjoy co-op but I don't see it as "the only way to go" as far as online modes go, especially from id who pioneered competitive multiplayer with the global masses.

I agree that Rage is a really good and complete package. Games like Mass Effect have layers of menus, cut scenes and inventory to distract you from the fact that the core gameplay is incredibly dull. Rage is fun at the core gameplay level and that was clearly the games focus. I'm more into single player so I appreciated the world and atmosphere alot.

That said I think Rage needed a bit more content straight out of the box because when you boil it down it has a relatively small game world. More of those doors and gateways which are so obviously hooks for DLC should have been included for the core game. Rage looks too good for it's own good because I just wanted more to see and do but obviously that size of game is beyond the scope of a medium sized dev like ID. The problem is we've all been spoiled by huge expansive worlds like Fallout 3 and Red Dead so if you're gonna compete in that arena you have to deliver a game of similar scope.

Like all id games Rage is an arcade style shooter, but one that pushes the boundaries of graphics rather then pure arcade style fun. It has some humor, but its not over the top like Duke Nukem. It has some scenes where monsters mob you like most other arcade shooters , but they had to cut back on that to get 60fps on consoles for all the driving scenes. Its neither fish nor fowl and a lot of gamers were completely confused about what kind of game it is. I tried to warn people it was another run-n-gun style shooter, but they heard it has RPG elements and was semi-open world and believed what they wanted to believe. The low resolution textures, the marginal story, all the driver issues, and the complete flop of an ending sealed Rage's fate.

Hopefully Doom 4 and Rage 2 will fare better. All the basics are there for them to become classics and its just a question of putting the pieces together just right. Now that id has made the transition to the id tech 5 engine, finally worked out the driver bugs, and produced their first game using it they concentrate on perfecting the games themselves.

Also if it had dynamic job board missions, those were very exciting, especially that sniper escort job.
If it had 10 types of those jobs that would vary throgh enemies and locations, the replay value would have quadrupled.

I think history and perspective will be kind to the game. As well as the obvious problems, I did detect a certain amount of people wanting to hate on it, perhaps as a result of it being the first major in-house id title since Doom 3, perhaps as a result of the sale to Zenimax, who knows. They could have released their best game ever and I think it would have drawn much the same flak from much the same sources. But I suspect that looking back on it in - say - 5 years time will tell a more evenly balanced story.

It's not an id software classic, never will be, but it's not the total trainwreck some paint it as either.

I'm not too certain about the MP modes; id have already done MP, they've refined it, it's nothing new for them, and it's really a case of damned if they do/damned if they don't here. Inclusion of more MP modes would have drawn accusations of them treading the same old ground they've done before, is what I mean.

id tends to draw lots of flak from the sidelines for almost every title they release now for no good reason. I'm not exactly sure how or why that ever started, since it's pretty irrational and stupid when you get right down to it. But I think that part of the problem lies in the fact that id hasn't produced a really great game in well over a decade.

Nobody is safe online anymore. The slightest problem is like blood in the water for the sharks and video games have cultivated their own special breed of sharks with multiplayer trash talk. Metacritic's latest rating for Mass Effect 3 is 8.9 from reviewers, and 3.8 from players. It's too bad really because the professional reviewers have been unreliable enough without gamer's criticisms also becoming unreliable. Its reached such extremes though that there's already a swing in the other direction as websites like Kotaku that promotes such stupidity steadily loose readers.

Good post OP - agree wit you for the most part.
I enjoy death match but think a fleshed out coop multi addition to RAGE would rock.

Perhaps the huge graphical bugs when game was released created a critical amount of bad publicity.

Also a hi-res texture pack would have been nice like Crytek did for Crysis 2.

The problem I had with Rage, and still do, is that there would be absolutely nothing that I would do differently if I had to do it all over again. There were no random events... there were no divergent paths. It's what it is... and I enjoyed it once. It has absolutely nothing to make me want to play it again.

Lots of technical issues, lots of broken promises, the ending. RAGE is a good game, but not nearly good enough to survive all that altogether. Look at Mass Effect 3. They have the same (although tech issues are not nearly as severe) and BioWare is already trying to please fanbase by releasing free multiplayer DLC and promising to extend the ending.
In RAGE people (myself included) expected to find a PC-centered shooter, that would push the boundaries of (at least) how games should look. Pushing the boundaries of how they should play would be nice as well. What we got was a pretty bad PC version which was unplayable on half the video cards in existence and had lots of texture/model pop-up issues on other half. Plus, the comparisons to Fallout were inevitable and RAGE is too damn linear compared to Fallout 3 or New Vegas.
And also, lots of PC gamers (myself included) were enraged with Carmack saying that PCs weren't the prime platform for RAGE, which looked like Carmack was scolding PCs.

I'd say that Rage is more of a technical achievement than a graphical achievement. The 60 FPS and unique textures are nice but face hard competition against a lot of other games that go for 30 FPS and lots of pretty shaders and details.

Anyway, from the beginning it was clear that Doom4 is the game that's going to push the graphical envelope further, not Rage. In other words, Rage introduced id Tech 5 to the masses, but Doom 4 is the game that will capitalize on it. In fact, if Doom 4 is released for this generation of consoles, Carmack has stated that it will be locked at 30 FPS on the consoles so that they can have more graphical fidelity for all platforms.

Well in the end it worked out pretty good for me, since my PC is six years old and has low-end hardware even for its time.

I can't imagine that the XBox360 is going to handle Doom 4 very well... I could imagine it on there, but it will just be so far below the standard of the PC, and maybe even the PS3 one, that it might be better to wait for the XBox720. Don't know yet though. I'd like to compare them all running at the same time, PC on max ssettings, and then really anolyse the difference in quality. The ebst quality PC's of today are now far beyond that of the PS3, so it would be interesting to really compare and note down in what areas the most significant differences are.

It would be abit of a shame to see them all on par... In fact, it would be a huge shame, hopefully Doom 4 will have customizable graphics settings that really allow you to tweak the game (thinking Unreal Tournament 3 or Crysis graphics options)

I'm not entirely certain how you can start out at what Carmack said and arrive at that conclusion, and I'm not entirely certain how a comment about a machine could elicit some of the strong emotional responses we've seen, but then again I well recall the PlayStation vs Saturn wars so there is precedent.

I'd encourage people to drop the tribalism and look at the hard facts here. PC architecture is optimized around certain usage patterns - you load everything one-time-only up-front, and then reuse all of that cached data. Console architecture has more limited resources so it optimizes differently - you can't load everything up-front because you just don't have enough memory, so instead consoles are built to be extremely efficient at streaming data. It's also the case that every 360 has the same hardware, meaning that a 360 game can be coded more directly to the metal (bypassing API and driver overhead, which can be quite significant) and can take advantage of platform-specific optimizations that are not possible with PC. If you know that "every machine this is going to run on will have hardware X" then you can code optimizations for hardware X thoughout your entire renderer without having to worry about whether or not they'll break on hardware Y, Z or W.

When you take these facts together it's pretty inevitable that for Rage a console is going to be a better platform.

For Doom 4 this has changed - both AMD and Intel now have new GL extensions that allow the more direct access to texture memory that the technology requires so much. I would expect NV to follow, if they haven't already done so (although texture streaming is nowhere near as much of a bottleneck on NV as it can be on the other two). I'd also expect Doom 4 on PC to be a 64-bit program, with no 32-bit version being made available, which should help with caching data in system RAM rather than having to read from the HD so much.

I must admit, I at least expected better post game support from id. I know things are meant to be coming, but they always used to be right there pre/post launch communicating with people, listening to their player base and making adjustments, keeping people informed.

I know we're getting the mod tools "soon", but this would easily be the worst post launch treatment I've known id to do.

Agreed. I think part of this is simply caused by the fact that id has tripled their size over the past year or two and folded themselves into a much larger company. The pressure to get the game done on time as well as the changes in management and team structure must have had an impact not just on the ultimate quality of the product but its post-release support as well.

So true. I really felt the 'sharks' were circling ID in the run up to Rages' release date ...some reviewers had an axe to grind and nothing was going to placate them.

Right. There is no way it failed on it's merits, or lack thereof. No it's a conspiracy. ROTFLMFAO

You didn't get it. I'm (and many PC gamers with me) angry not because he did it that way. Everybody does. I'm angry because he said what he said. That PC is not the priority platform for him. He knew he's gonna enRAGE a lot of people. He just didn't care. I don't know if he was trying to cater to console crowd or something but this was a really stupid thing to say anyway. Because console gamers didn't really care, since they are too busy flamewaring between each other on which console is superior, they are more disconnected. Maybe even too numerous to be connected. PC gamers on the other hand, being a smaller but tighter crowd, got really damn pissed off. And pissing off those, who remember what your previous games were like and who have more interest in your product, not even mentioning that they also happen to be 1/3 of your potential client base, is idiotic.

I hate to break it to you but console gamers aren't a sub or seperate species, they're generally just gamers, quite possibly owning multiple systems. Generalising and saying what people want isn't a great way to validate any argument.

^ This! I own an Xbox because I couldn't afford to pay $1000 for a good computer, not because I'm a stupid casual gamer. If I had the funds I would take a PC over a console any day.

Nobody was talking about "stupid casual gamers". Just the PC and console communities are different and PC guys are really sensitive about their platform.

Yes, but we can get over it. You as an individual are over reacting, and so are the others still pissed off.
These over reactions out there are still producting idiots arguing that id has sold out, that Doom4 will be [censored] and so forth, and these people aren't acting as PC gamers. They are acting as morons.

Carmack said the whole "we never saw PC as the leading platform" a long time ago, and it's not the first time he's said something ridiculous, so get over it. He's a human, not a damn robot.

What you do not understand is that the relationship that id had with it's customers, us PC gamers, has been destroyed.

At one time id could do no wrong now it's pretty well the opposite until they do something to deal with the situation they have created with Rage. They won't even talk to us at the moment so I don't expect a resolution soon. A killer Doom 4 would help but I doubt it will happen, the killer part that is. It would be impossible for the console wienies.