I hope they have proper positional audio design this time around on par with Devil Daggers so you can actually hear and respond to Imps blindsiding you outside your field of vision.
I hope they just do away with all the upgrade nonsense so I don't feel obliged to constantly pause the game and sift through upgrades and daily challenges and challenge status. Otherwise I hope we get a branching progression with actual build variety instead of a progression system which amounts to "which upgrade do you want first? because you'll get all of the useful ones eventually", to the point where I might as well get weapons and mods in a traditional linear path instead of being given the illusion of choice.
I hope Glory Kills aren't such a massive noobtrap anymore. Why would you risk losing awareness of what's going on around you for a measly +5 or +10 HP bonus when killing enemies normally at low health already drops bonus health?
The guy who was the first one to clear the game on Ultranightmare says that he never used it because it's just way too risky with the rewards not being worth it
I hope they replace Glory Kills with a dash move like they did in Doom VFR. None of the forced animation nonsense, just let me bash into enemies for health and let me be on my way.
I hope basic things such as air control and faster weapon switch speed are base features and aren't locked behind upgrades so they can sell you more upgrades for the sake of having more upgrades.
I hope ammo management is an actual thing. Being able to refill half of all my ammo with the press of a Chainsaw button and having chainsaw fuel be liberally sprinkled around levels means I don't have to worry about ammo ever once I get the Chainsaw.
I hope that BFG charges aren't so damn plentiful and that the BFG isn't so damn OP. I never used it because I never had to and because it saps away all the challenge.
I hope the game makes up its mind whether it wants to be a Doom game or whether it wants to be its own thing. The gist of the combat takes place in arenas, but arenas cannot gel with exploration or non-linear level design, so they're two separate parts which get in the way of eachother in terms of pacing. But we gotta have colored keycards and we gotta have exploration because it's a Doom game, but as it is it goes against the way combat in D2016 is designed. Either do away with combat arenas or do away with the boring-ass exploration parts inbetween. The OG managed a perfect fusion of both, it didn't try to separate the two outside certain levels.
I hope enemies actually bother to inhibit your movement options. You're given way too much freedom in where you can move, and enemies don't really restrict your movement in this regard. There's no blankets of fireballs because they're way too fast, Cyber-Mancubus acid is barely even noticeable, and there's a lack of enemies like Hell Knights which can effectively chase you down. I never really have to think where to move next in D2016, I just follow the enemies with disco-lights on them.
I hope the Revenant gets his homing missiles back so he isn't just an Imp with a jetpack anymore.
I hope that there's actually more boss fights, because D2016 is the only FPS I've played which comes close to having a good FPS boss fight. All they really need is additional regular enemies spawning in because otherwise the only weapons you'd use against bosses are the RL/GR.
I hope there's more projectile attacks which involve you having to jump over them (like the Cyberdemon's slash waves for his boss fight or the Hell Guard's spinning hopscotch lasers) or turning the floor into lava so you're forced to jump onto a platform (like the Spider Mastermind's lava attack). In fact the bosses in D2016 should have had their attacks repurposed for normal enemies or as mini-bosses. Let me slide under fireballs while we're at it.
I hope your standard melee attack isn't a pitiful rifle stock bash. Give each weapon its unique melee attack like in Vanquish.
I hope that arena design actually influences more how each fight plays out. What makes this arena play so differently from the other? By the end I couldn't tell the difference at all. Basically, there ought to be more environmental hazards to affect how you and the enemies can move around.
I hope that there's more agile "mobile archer" type enemies like the Imp, because Hell Razers/Possessed Guards/Engineers felt like wastes of space because they were too slow and not immediately threatening to be of any threat at all.
I hope power-ups like Berserk and Quad Damage don't turn the game into a mindless buttonbashing fest. When they used Quads in Quake, they actually upped the enemy count further to compensate.
I hope the pistol, combat shotgun, plasma rifle and minigun are actually useful on higher difficulties outside their mods. The Combat Shotgun has a piss-poor range that equals the super shotty, but the shotty has a higher DPS, so there's no reason why you would go back to the combat shotgun, especially not when the Chainsaw makes ammo management irrelevant.
I hope that the AI can actually utilize the verticality of the arenas, that them being up top makes them actually more threatening and that they make it harder for me to get up top in the first place.
I hope there's more in the area of movement techs on par with Titanfall 2 and that movement inside arenas isn't so reliant on ledge grabbing. Ledge grabbing in Titanfall 2 was a crutch which slowed you down, but you had the techniques to go faster than your regular speed and build up ridiculous speeds so you didn't need to use ledge grabbing when jumping between platforms if you were good enough.
I hope that using alternate weapon fire modes isn't so reliant on cooldowns for the sake of balance. Balancing with cooldowns is the cheap way to do it and takes away user expression by limiting you through time, it'd be more interesting if you had to manage alternate fires through a resource (this usually being ammo) or by tying them to charge functions. Similarly how action games let you cancel recovery frames for attacks so you can stay on the offensive. At the very least there should be a way to reduce cooldowns by doing certain actions.
I hope that the game isn't so hypocritical to say "fuck unskippable cutscenes and story!" and then constantly lock me into what amounts to an unskippable "wait until this character is done talking" "gameplay" segment. Did anybody enjoy being locked into Hayden's office and waiting for him to stop talking and walking around?
I hope that this game does away with all the
bloat of all these unnecessary upgrade systems, collectibles, animations playing out for every single action (did you enjoy sitting through the skinning animation everytime you skinned an animal in FarCry before 5?), empty exploration, story and platforming segments devoid of enemies. The OG was fun in its purity and simplicity and all the story was skippable with the press of a button, but because this is an AAA game we gotta have aaaaaall this side-content to appeal to every audience imaginable. I don't mind the hidden lore stuff because it is optional, but please keep the focus on the combat.
