Is it too late?
We’ve spent plenty of time praising Doom‘s single-player campaign. Our review breathlessly covers it, and we even dedicated most of a podcast to discussing it. The reason we keyed in on that aspect of the game so heavily is because the multiplayer comes nowhere close to equaling the campaign. Doom‘s multiplayer feels a lot like a watered-down and less impressive version of all the safest and most popular first-person shooters on the market.
Doom‘s developers are looking to turn that around, or, at least to get multiplayer in a more respectable state. Eurogamer reports that id Software is taking over multiplayer duties and that contractor Certain Affinity is no longer on the project. While it’s not explicitly stated, this is probably not a firing; instead, Certain Affinity’s contract likely ran through the launch of the game.
First on id’s list of to-dos is to focus on the PC version. That install-base seems to be the most discontent. Private matches with custom game settings is expected in a free update this summer. Bot implementation and better cheating detection are also issues that will be addressed. It’s unclear if any significant overhauls for console version of Doom are also planned.
It’s in id’s and Bethesda’s best interests to have people interested in Doom‘s multiplayer — especially since all of the game’s DLC will be in the form of $15 map packs. Executive producer and director Marty Stratton remarked “There’s certainly no lack of commitment to Doom as a multiplayer game on our side.” If you’re curious about the specifics of that, you can read the full interview here.
id takes back control of Doom’s broken multiplayer on PC [Eurogamer]
