What is Doom doing better than Duke Nukem 3D?

For me it's the accessibility and mods.

If Duke3d had a proper ZDoom and a simple editors like Doom Builder or Slade it would change the Duke fanbase/community alot.

Because of the lack of simple editors and it's small modding community I feel like alot of creators are gonna stick with Doom instead of making a mapset for something like Duke.

We can all agree modding is basically one of the biggest parts of why Doom is still being played today.

And yes Duke does have some notable mods but it will most likely never reach the endless amount of content we now have for Doom I & II.

(Also I know about EDuke32)

There was a thread on Duke4.net where someone, who played Doom for the first time, was asking why Doom felt like it had more replay value.

This was my response

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It could be a variety of factors really. For me, Doom (I mostly mean Doom 2 actually) has more replay value than Duke3D, despite Duke having better level design and better protagonist. For me, one of the major factors is that I like the core gunplay and the enemy roster of Doom more than that of Duke3D.

Doom 2's enemies seem better balanced (like hitscan enemies have high pain chance and less hp) and have more diverse roles like:
- Enemies that replenish the battlefield (Archviles, Pain Elementals)
- Enemies with complex attack patterns (Revenants, Mancubi)
- Area denial enemies (Archviles)
- Turret style enemies (Arachnotrons)
- Strong enemies in levels (like Cyberdemon and SMM) unlike mini-Battlelords that can be shrunk in 1 shot or killed by 6 rockets.

Apart from that, as IggySquiggles mentioned, Doom has more modern, easy-to-learn and well documented modiing/mapping tools.

Better community output, better tools and more advanced modding capabilities, better bestiary and balancing, and more replayability.

Less and weaker hitscans, for starters.

I really like Duke 3D but I felt like the game was wayyy too happy to throw tons of hitscans at you when you don't have the means to fight them properly. At least in Blood you can crouch and have stuff like dynamite to counterbalance it but here? Nothing, just hit and duck in cover.

7 minutes ago, Dwimepon said:

Less and weaker hitscans, for starters.

I really like Duke 3D but I felt like the game was wayyy too happy to throw tons of hitscans at you when you don't have the means to fight them properly. At least in Blood you can crounch and have stuff like dynamite to counterbalance it but here? Nothing, just hit and duck in cover.

And they also had pain states, which Duke does not.

The Enforcer and mini Battlelords absolutely should have had pain states, the Pig Cops do in comparison, but they don't.

I think Doom 2's enemy roster elevates it over most other old school shooters. How every enemy has it's role in combat and what interesting encounters one can create by combining them in different ways. Of course, this mostly just applies to modding, vanilla usually Doom 2 doesn't make the best use of em, imo, with exceptions being some of Romero's and McGee's work. I won't say that Duke 3d's combat is boring or anything but it's strengths lie elsewhere.

I think Duke 3D also has some Level Design that is to "advanced" for the Engine.
Placing Enemies way above you in an Engine that isn't so much better than Doom ones and having sometimes to use the Jetpack in such Engine just doesn't feel as good.
Duke 3D used many Novelties into Ego Shooters, Doom lives with its Limits and uses its Strengths pretty good (Combat, Discovery, Puzzling).

You're right on about the monster types and in-fighting etc. Doom's bestiary is much more iconic, involved to fight, bigger in number and variety, and you're not pigeonholed into playing some blonde dude who talks alot

as mentioned previously, modding the game is a bit easier and doom 2's bestiary is much more balanced and diverse, leading to a larger variety of original mods and such that can be created. that's in addition to the game just having better gameplay in general, and being an incredible base to create mods for

however, there's four big things that haven't been mentioned yet

1.) doom's source code was released 5 years earlier than duke's. this meant that source ports that could bring the game to modern systems and add all sorts of new features could be created much earlier than for duke 3d, making it far more accessible. i honestly think that, other than what everyone else has said, this is one of the biggest reasons as to why the doom community is so much larger. by the time duke's source code was released, there were already a multitude of source ports for doom that could do what the build engine could do and more

2.) doom went 2 whole years pretty much unrivaled in its genre, which i would think helped it cement a dedicated, long-lasting community.

3.) doom had more releases and more official content put out for it than duke 3d did, which would obviously help to bolster its community

4.) doom aged much better and isn't full of dated references and humor (cuz...well...there are none lol)

4 hours ago, Hisymak said:

Doom has map format which is much easier to understand and create maps in, and most importantly much better and comfortable mapping tools. Duke 3D has just "Build" editor which is clunky and uncomfortable to use, many things are done with various key shortcuts and combinations you need to figure out and remember. But most importantly, map actions and "scripting" is done via special things you add to map, and sector and thing tags (lo-tags and hi-tags) you need to know and remember what each value does, for example even making a simple door needs an advanced tutorial. A person needs to be engineer to create anything.

This, absolutely.

Definitely the monster balance for me. Everything is way too fragile.

3 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

This was my response

- Strong enemies in levels (like Cyberdemon and SMM) unlike mini-Battlelords that can be shrunk in 1 shot or killed by 6 rockets.

- The Shrinker is only really reliable when you disable auto aim and use the mouse to hit his feet. And even then, like everything in Duke, he's fragile anyway.

Duke Nukem 3D's levels look better and it has a more satisfying arsenal (except the Trip Mines) and it is nice to be able to carry powerups around and use them when necessary, but Duke Nukem himself seems more fragile than he ought to be, fighting 2D sprite enemies in full-3D environments can be very frustrating, the level design allows for too many cheap deaths (e.g. pitfalls, getting squished by a freaking door), most enemies are not very fun to fight and all the boss fights are just annoying, the Steroids are a poor substitute for Doom's Berserk and it also has some weird pacing issues; I mean, E1L3 not only taking away all your weapons but starting you off on an electric chair that will chip away at your health right off the bat, really?

All in all, Doom feels like a fairer, tighter, more balanced experience - with the exception of Thy Flesh Consumed, but since that one was meant as a bonus episode for veteran players released later, it does not really count.

Kinda reminds me of the age old "Super Mario World" VS "Sonic 1" argument. Sonic has more attitude and dared to take some really interesting risks that Mario didn't, but the experience was still jankier on the whole just not as balanced, grounded and fun. Still definitely a worthwhile competitor though.

This is a side note, and I know the mapping formats and general functionality of the games are far too different for this to be conceivable, but if there was some weird version of GZDoom that had full Build game support (or even just Duke 3D) that would be mind-blowingly cool.

Overall I strongly prefer Doom due to style/attitude, design and simplicity/elegance.

Last being one of the main reasons why doom is so good. Gameplay feels robust, minimalistic and satisfying - overall a treat.

When creating "content" tools are provided  that are just beyond superb(especially Doombuilder).

Duke3D's artwork is in many cases inferior, especially the "enemies"(few exceptions like the flying fatso-disc? and the octabrain) but also has some immense strengths regarding some of the texture work and level design(especially E1M3, E1M5). The mappers pulled of "realistic" entries while keeping them enjoyable and interesting. Player movement and feel is jumpy but nonetheless great. One of the weak points is that when killing the enemies they often feel like cutouts with no volume or weight behind them(mostly the little lizards?).

The build tools are Ken-o-matic which means they're not meant for standard users - there should have been one abstraction layer and then an expert mode revealing all tidbits. The biggest no-go was the 1024 sector limit though. Despite the criticism Ken did all the framework by himself so kudos to him.

16 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

- The Shrinker is only really reliable when you disable auto aim and use the mouse to hit his feet. And even then, like everything in Duke, he's fragile anyway.

True. But like you said, he is fragile anyway (6 rockets kill him) so it doesn't change much. The thing about Doom is that the monsters are more diverse in terms of hitpoints. The hitscanners in Doom are more fragile than Duke's hitscanners, but Doom also has a whole variety of stronger enemies.

9 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

but if there was some weird version of GZDoom that had full Build game support (or even just Duke 3D) that would be mind-blowingly cool.

I assume you are aware of Raze?

(though if by GZDoom, you mean having GZDoom's easy modding capabilities then Raze is still far away from that)

There was a program called WAD2MAP that allowed you to convert DOOM, DOOM II & possibly Heretic maps and convert them to Duke 3D. It's still available in the Duke 3D modding community, but dare I say to you, that's not supposed to be the intended way to create maps for Duke 3D, and it's not good. Taking an existing DOOM map and converting it to a Duke 3D map isn't the way to go.

Doom is better than Duke3D in almost every regard if you ask me. That's not to say the latter is a bad game - having played through it once, I found it decently enjoyable and can see its appeal - but I just find Doom overall the more enjoyable and technically impressive game. Though two cool things Duke3D does have that (vanilla) Doom doesn't is 3D floors and swimmable water.

3 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

I assume you are aware of Raze?

(though if by GZDoom, you mean having GZDoom's easy modding capabilities then Raze is still far away from that)

Raze is awesome, but I was thinking more along the lines of something that somehow interprets Duke/Build maps and spits them out in a ready-to-play format GZDoom understands natively (UDMF I suppose it would be in this fantasy world). So basically you could play Duke stuff practically lossless but in GZDoom's more stable and flexible engine! Again, I know this is a pipe dream, lol.

Also one more thing regarding monster balance. I assume it was intentional but i hate how explosive weapons instagib Octabrains instantly. A single Devastator mini rocket and it evaporates even several of them at once. I am almost always full on all ammo in Duke 3D unless I exclusively use one weapon only.

for me duke just feels a bit unbalanced when compared to doom 2

a lot of enemies are just not fun to fight and i dont like most the weapons

though i still like duke3d i just feel like doom is better

Doom got the arsenal and bestiary down to a science.  Duke 3D might have had the better and more imaginative levels in the base game, but it's a lot easier to fix the subpar level design of doom with new levels than fix the shallower moment-to-moment gameplay of Duke.

Simply due to the iconicity of "being the first", the regular rehashes, reissues etc. (even though, admittedly, there was quite a void between Doom 2 / Final Doom / Doom 64 and Doom 3).

But the most important thing for me is that Doom is, all things considered, quite "casual" in its approach to gaming. You are just a space marine that kills demons, simple as that. There's not much to like or dislike, learn about or relate to, hell, not even an identifiable character by name. They didn't even bother with a (real) story until Doom 3, and still Doom did pretty fine. This works even for the casual/just-got-here kind of gamer,for whom the existence of 1000s of mods, ease of modding etc. don't mean much.

OTOH, playing as the Duke, well, it ain't everybody's cup of tea. Not everybody like the idea of being a 'roid-takin', wise-ass/tough quotes crackin', pretty-boy jock, fighting, of all things, aliens. Yawn. Duke Nukem Forever didn't help speed things along, either. You'd think that Duke would be more memorable, relatable etc. and yet, nope. He's far more "niche" than Doom/Doomguy.

Source port and map builder. No need for more words i guess.

However, one area where I would give credit to Duke is the level design (maps that look relatable and yet also have good flow/gameplay).

In Doom's case, such maps are almost non-existent even among community maps. Most maps that try to have a sense of place (by sense of place, I don't mean just a sector chair made in a church like room or have a castle like building) are not that good in gameplay department. While most maps that have excellent gameplay are usually abstract in their nature.

Skillsaw's Heartland is one of the few mapsets I have come across that really excels in both departments.

Both of them have source ports,  map builders, both of them are fun to play, both of them have  nice communities.

BUT there is ONE KEY difference.

Doom as franchise was always owned by people that was  wise with the Marketing and PR. On the other hand Duke franchise is a big mess.

Doom is just like Mario, the owners do care about the product and try to sell stuff that has good quality, while Duke  was Sonic, owned by Sega wanted to be edgy way too hard...

Doom feels more robust in the basic things like movement, gunplay, blast damage, enemies attacks variety.

On the other hand, I think that Allen Blum is one of the best level designers ever. Duke Nukem 3D levels overall have some unprecedented level of polish. It must be noted that 3D realms spent a year and a half designing them though. Doom, Doom II and even Quake levels were made in a much shorter time.

What is Doom doing better than Duke 3d?

Being a good game ;p

20 minutes ago, Wild Dog said:

Doom as franchise was always owned by people that was  wise with the Marketing and PR.

...so, are we just gonna forget that the "romero will make you his bitch" ad existed

Just now, roadworx said:

...so, are we just gonna forget that the "romero will make you his bitch" ad existed

Was Romero working for ID when he said that??? No, he was on a EGO TRIP working on Daikatana,  thinking he was the ONLY reason why Doom and Quake were popular.

and everyone knows that Daikatana was big blockbuster.