Cania

Obviously in the minority on this opinion. I got a few people to play it at a QuakeCon a couple years ago and they weren't fans. Philistines.

There were a lot of reasons why Doom 3's multiplayer fell flat. I think a lot of it was bad timing:

• People were trying to make Pro Gaming a Thing, and D3 is shit-poor at pro gaming, both to play and to watch.
• The system requirements were also steep just to run the game and to play it online: broadband was gaining penetration but it was nowhere near what it is today.
• The netcode was also limited: players who were used to sixteen slots at minimum in previous games were now faced with a limit of four.
• The whole industry was pivoting away from basic deathmatch: team games were the in thing, especially class-based team games; D3's expansion doubled the player slots and added CTF, but it was already too late at that point, and like I said, class-based was the hot new thing.
• The focus on single-player meant a paltry map rotation out of the gate that the expansion pack added little to.

I could go on.

But taken for what it is, I honestly think the experience was just fine. The rest of the failure was simply people playing the game wrong, which is a heretical thing to say, I know, but this is my cohost account, and if I want to I can shit-talk everyone who picked up Doom 3 multiplayer, expected Quake 3 with realtime shadows, got slaughtered one too many times blindly running into a room by someone camping in a dark corner, and called it quits.

This was a thinking person's game, and players needed to weigh the risk and benefits of leaving the shadows to grab power-ups or weapons. This was lethal hide-and-seek.

Look, you don't have to like deathmatch horror, but I did. I loved every minute of it for the short time people actually played it online. It was a genuinely terrifying experience. In prior games, I was rarely ever startled. Years of playing Quake had given me a pretty good sense of awareness that fell apart in the blackened rooms of Doom 3's deathmatch maps. On many an occasion I would cautiously explore a room, believe I was alone, make my way for the door, and then literally jump in my seat when I took a shotgun blast to the spine. (people love to talk trash about D3's shotgun in the single player campaign, but in multiplayer, it was devastating.

But yeah, minority opinion. Not fun, or at least not fun enough to keep any kind of a player base beyond six months. Their loss. At least I got to experience it. Later, nerds!

I will have to come back to this later when I'm not at work, but @Shadsy and I once made a Doom 3 mod to fix multiplayer and it was hilarious and amazing

this honestly sounds incredible. i had to stop playing PUBG because it was giving me heart palpitations, but i've never played another fear based PVP game. i wanna play this now

Back when I first was getting into The Linux, I didn't have too much in the way of options for current retail games. Thankfully, Doom 3 had native, official Linux binaries on the disc in the original boxed release! And I actually really enjoyed playing this game, as did my good friend and partner in crime, @Shadsy
We were even able to play deathmatch together because I finally upgraded from dial-up to DSL! And it was... hm. It had problems. Going by memory, here's what we noticed:

• The weapon reloading mechanic was great for the main campaign, but negatively impacted deathmatch, as you were spending most of your time hiding so you can have your weapons work again.
• Sluggish movement wasn't very fun. It was too difficult to avoid enemy fire.
• It was too damn easy to spawn camp. If you died, you basically respawned with a big ol' Kick Me sign taped to your back, as there were limited respawn points and you had no equipment.

Eventually, we discovered the magic of modding. Shadsy did most of the work, I did testing and came up with concepts and balance ideas. The result was Doom 3: Lightning Battle. Again, from memory, here's what we changed:

• Weapon magazine size and max ammo capacity was dramatically increased. This meant that you could use a weapon for a lot longer before needing to reload, giving the guns a more classic Doom/Quake feel.
• Player movement speed was increased. While it wasn't super quick, it was fast enough to not cause gameplay issues while also allowing players to evade attacks.
• Upon spawning, you were given a handful of regular weapons and a token amount of ammo. This meant that if you died, you could defend yourself after respawning. Not enough for a proper fire fight, but enough to deter would-be spawn campers.
• Players would spawn with 500 health. This meant battles could be longer and more exciting. However, the normal maximum is still 100, and overheath still maxes at 200. This meant that healing was less effective but still viable. Also, grabbing a soul sphere just set your health to 200 regardless of how much health you had, and we decided to keep it; this made the most damaging element be your own greed, doing up to 300 damage.
• Rocket launchers shot chainsaws. Because it was funny.
• A new weapon was added: the Explosion Gun. It looked like the regular pistol, but it only had 5 max ammo and a clip size of 2. The shots would create a massive explosion on impact, capable of knocking a Pinky across an entire football field.
• A bunch of maps were added, some from other creators, some made by Shadsy. Highlights include said football stadium, Mario Kart 64's Block Fort, and the lobby shootout scene from The Matrix.

We had ideas for new content and even a single player campaign, but never got around to them. One concept we had - a hammer weapon - did eventually see the light of day in Reelism 2 as Big Swingy. And the Atomic Revolver is basically a better Explosion Gun. And @ShadowHog even made a Block Fort map!

As for Doom 3: Lightning Battle, I do recall public releases were made, and videos were posted, but... did ModDB prune their site or something? I went looking for it earlier but couldn't find it. Hopefully Shadsy can reply to this with any materials that he can dig out of deep storage!

Everything was hosted on the Doom 3 mod site D3Files, which is long gone, and a site we had on a free webhost that is even longer gone. This is mostly right but there are some important details @techokami left out:

• Players walked THREE TIMES AS AS FAST.
• Players jumped TWELVE TIMES AS HIGH.
• There was NO LIMIT on view pitch so you could do backflips.

This was the Lightning part of Lightning Battle. The game was outrageously fast. And with the changes to health and ammo, combat lasted much longer, with zero chance for the player to breathe. There was no pacing.

On standard-sized DM maps, it was nuts, but at least it felt like a fast-paced shooter. On the custom maps we made, which were purposely massive, it was more like playing Tribes while doing whippits and every player is the size of a flea. For instance, here's the football field map Techo alluded to, with the biggest Doom 3 bosses and a player for scale.

With 19 years of hindsight, it didn't so much fix Doom 3 multiplayer as much as it turn it into a different game that is also bad. However it was still VERY FUN and VERY STUPID.

Please enjoy this minute of an early Lightning Battle deathmatch with @techokami that I salvaged from my old hard drive, recorded in 2004 on a remake of Q3DM6 that we found on D3Files. It predates the introduction of the Explosion Gun but you get some good time with the Chainsaw Launcher.