id Software has a long and storied history in the first person shooter space, and I, like many gamers, have been hoping that the new Doom

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“ Doom's multiplayer... is a Strogg-like fusion of Call of Duty meets Quake

Q3A's The Longest Yard - still an incredible map.

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“ The reality [is] that the weapons simply don’t do enough damage.

The Super Shotgun in action in single player.

The former may certainly come to pass, but as far as multiplayer is concerned, my time with the closed beta has left me disappointed. Simply put, Doom is not going to provide a true arena shooter experience, and it’s best not to think of it as one. This, despite being presented as an arena shooter in terms of its map design and presentation, its developer descriptions at QuakeCon, and in promotional videos.There are certainly some key elements here, however. Doom’s multiplayer, for instance, has an emphasis on verticality, lower lethality compared to the campaign, comparatively high movement speed (next to modern shooters or, specifically, Doom 3), and a number of features lifted directly from Quake: bounce pads, certain weapons, and four equipment items that are exact copies (Invisibility, Haste, Regeneration, and Quad Damage).So, what exactly are we talking about here? While there is division on some of the supplementary pillars of an arena shooter, there’s a strong general consensus on the key mainstays. First and foremost, all players start on equal footing. In Quake III terms, this means players start with a machine gun and melee gauntlet, while weapons are collected from fixed spawn points.These weapons are far from reskinned versions of each other, too: each weapon has a specific purpose and, therefore, requires specific skills to master. Linked to the first point is the second: players have the ability to buff both offensive and defensive capabilities from map pick-ups only. In basic offensive terms, it’s weapons, but it also includes pick-ups such as Quad Damage to temporarily boost attack damage.In defensive terms, it means replenishing or boosting health beyond 100HP and/or collecting armour in a similar fashion. The is important because it links into the third point: maps and item drops should be balanced for a 1v1 environment, with free-for-all or team-based modes treated as secondary, which leads to the last pillar. Total map control is essential to improving your chances of killing faster or living longer and achieved by moving, not camping an area.All of this combines to create an environment that rewards highly skilled players who are constantly moving, where the final scorecard is reflective of performance built atop fast reactions and impressive accuracy. It doesn’t have to be tricky to learn, but it is harder to master. These tenets are inadequately reflected in what I’ve played of Doom’s competitive multiplayer.There’s trouble out of the gate, in terms of the arena shooter classification, with the two-weapon loadout system. This is, coincidentally, ripped right out of the Halo handbook, which has since become standard across contemporary military shooters: a primary and secondary weapon. Doom is slightly more flexible in that the player can choose from the full arsenal for filling primary and secondary weapon slots, but it immediately hamstrings a couple of pillars of the arena shooter classification.Primarily, it means players don’t spawn on an even keel. For example, if your first encounter is at range, and you’re only packing, say, a close-quarters combo of Super Shotgun and Lightning Gun, you’re screwed. In Doom, you don’t have access to a balanced default spawn weapon that works at any range; instead, you have to run, or close the gap without getting hit. To be fair, the addition of secondary-fire modes doesn’t break the approach to weapons in terms of an arena shooter, but it is lifted from Quake’s oldest competitor, Unreal.But then, Doom’s arsenal is confused in terms of what experience id is trying to sell. Over on the Bethesda.net blog, this article claims “you’ll need to stay in constant motion to stay alive,” yet the Vortex Rifle’s secondary fire requires a player to be zoomed in for a few seconds before they can achieve a fully charged shot.This essentially means the Vortex Rifle-wielding player needs to sacrifice visibility and movement speed to allow their shot to fully charge, attempting to move with the scope up to achieve maximum damage, but this runs at odds with the pace of an arena shooter. Alternatively, it means they need to camp which, according to that same link, is at odds with the map design across the board: “none of [the maps] are built to allow for easy sniping or hiding points.”But all of this pales in comparison to the reality that the weapons simply don’t do enough damage. On top of this, confusing Borderlands-style damage numbers spew out of enemies with every hit, and they’re either indicative of netcode issues or a damage feedback system that’s not reflective of base 100 health (with armour additions on top). I say this because, multiple times, it took three to four Super Shotgun blasts at point blank to kill a newly spawned, clearly unarmoured enemy, where the damage numbers read 55 every time. Go figure.