As I recall, you were also one of the most (if not the most) cautious players in the community.
But please stop using Doom as a bad example, I’m an avid Doomer (and by that I mean the games from 1994-1995) and I’m just as a big fan of that game as I am with Generation Zero. Sometimes I just go in guns blazing against the hordes, and come out on top anyway 
Doom has good balance. (and it’s had time to acquire it.) I’m pro-doom.
Interesting post. I’m only on level 20 something but I feel that the broken rhythm aspect of the game that you mentioned was due to the robots becoming smarter and more deadly, which makes sense to me.
Further, I’ve found that it’s mostly the bipedal hunters that are worse now. The dogs and tucks and tanks/harvesters are still about the same, except for the rocket dogs of course. I found that with a exp. 50cal I can survive a 3-4 hunter pack which feels great since in the beginning dogs would kill me.
I still feel that it’s brains over brawns, though. I can sneak around dogs and tanks and destroy a beacon. I can fall back to a defensive spot and deploy mines as a last line of defense or whatever while blasting the enemy from relative safety.
In short, ony level the game is still the same game for me. Maybe it gets worse…
I don’t mean it as a bad example, but of a different genre. I can remember the first fifteen minutes of Doom, three days after it came out - you had to turn left into a cul-de-sac with stairs in the middle of it, and somewhere by the side of the stairs was the first monster. I must have looked at that stairs for ten minutes, trying to work out how to get whatever it was at the top of the stairs I wanted. Was it a gun? An armour suit? Something.
I just like the term “Doom-Mongers” to describe the instant gratification boys and girls (mostly boys, actually).
So I shall use “Immersives” against “Doom-Mongers” to explore the tension between the two groups, as I intend to publically do after Tuesday at 14:00 Central Europrean Time, which is when I go up against “THE JURY”! Apo Tanks are not to be compared in terror to “THE JURY”. I intend to take in hand grenades, even if they are as likely to waste me as them…