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Doom's campaign was a wonderful surprise, and a progressive and worthy follow-up to a true classic. The multiplayer? Not so much. Sure, it's fun enough, and as Jon Denton said the other day, it features some smart design. But few would argue that Doom's multiplayer holds a candle to its campaign, despite it being a major focus in promotion on the run-up to release.A month after the game's release, players of Doom's online aren't happy, pointing serious criticism at the multiplayer for lacking various standards, such as provision for custom settings, choosing or voting on maps, and private matches. Their argument is that these are the kinds of features that help a healthy social and competitive community to build up around a game. Inevitably, these issues are a particular bugbear for PC players, for whom flexibility is an expectation.
Worse, on PC there's rampant cheating. Assists are easily available online ("You won't get banned using our Doom cheats; we haven't had one ban on any game in over a year; our coders are that good!" boasts the website for one of them), and I've found myself at their mercy over and over. Without the ability to browse private matches, or for players to run them on private servers, you have no chance of avoiding cheating players, other than to leave games and return to matchmaking. PC players argue that without private servers and admins with ban tools, Doom also doesn't profit from the community helping to police the game.
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