Ok look admin / GoG / whoever is in charge over there:

I'm not AGAINST paying you for a Heretic / Hexen pack..

I'm just going to NEED you to explain to me the advantage of paying you, instead of just running the wad files in my trusty Doom emulators I've been kept everything running in for the last.. 30 freaking years.

I mean.. resolution, better sound effects.. anything? ..any bonus at all?

I bought all of these games new, and I've paid $5 over the years to get them running on this or that system.. but currently everything runs from community contributed patches. What's the upside here?

It's a better package than what you'll get from the steam versions if you're planning on running in DOSBox (easy way to launch multiplayer, configure DOSBox, etc), not to mention you get cloud saves, which is a lot more useful than you may think.

Have you considered that maybe it's OK to not buy games you already have?

As you already legally own the games, there is no need for you to buy them again.

I only have a copy of Hexen, so I have bought the whole lot, but I'm not expecting any enhancements.

OP has a point, though, that GoG itself is not what I thought it would be. I thought they would put any effort at all into porting the games they aquire properly, not just hosting the original install files from the 90's like an FTP.

I was hoping GoG would do to all the old games that come in what Nightdive does. But they're just a jankier Steam I use to avoid system-crippling DRM like Denuvo at this point.

GoG really should hire a few interns to spruce up these classics to make you want to buy them again. Like Command & Conquer.

I'm not sure that's what GoG is about. It's a storefront that also tries to ensure that the games you buy work on modern hardware. Nightdive are a combined developer/publisher as are EA, so it's less surprising that they will tart up the games that they have bought the rights for.

GoG only have the rights to sell these games.

Plus, if they did put a load of effort into remastering them, and then sold them for more money (as they would need to be rewarded for their effort), everyone would complain that they're charging for what GZDOOM does for free.

GOG have never claimed to do what Nightdive do. GOG are not game developers.

What GOG do to games that they get rights to distribute are to tweak various compatibility mode settings, pre-apply patches, sometimes even community patches, use of wrappers for DirectX and 3DFX, registry tweaks, even sometimes no-CD patched executables, use of DOSBox to emulate DOS, use of ScummVM for relevant games, etc. all so that they will run on modern machines. They have a set of machines (I don't recall how many but I'm sure it was mentioned on the forum at some point) on which they have to get the game running on a certain number of them before they will consider releasing it.

There are no code changes to games, nor any remastering or redux versions created by GOG.

Not sure what you are complaining about. We were never told this was an "upgraded" version ported to some new engine. It was never even implied. I admit to being surprised there were no extras but no big deal. At the minimum, I did expect the manual if nothing else but other than that, I fully expected the DOSBox running the original version and that is what we got. Plenty of great emulators out there and that is what I expected to have to do to get decent visuals. I already have these games on disc from ancient time and on Steam but I wanted a version I didn't have to fool with Steam. $2.99 for 4 games was a win win situation for me.

https://www.gog.com/forum/heretic_hexen_collection/the_case_of_the_missing_manuals

This says that the manuals are present within the game installation, just that they haven't been uploaded to GOG for download in the "Extras" section.

Thanks Korell for the info. I had a lot to do this morning and really only had time to download and insure they were running properly in Doomsday and GZDoom. I figure that eventually it will be sorted out and even if it weren't I have access to the manual elsewhere.

Mnauals are includied in the game downlaod, they just do not show up as extras

Agree this is a disappointing release for a great set of games (Hexen 1 is a masterpiece).

This release is much better than Steam one, I don't know what's disappointing in it exactly.

I honestly cannot tell the difference to the patched Steam release, which due to the nature of just being a DosBox powered wad is also DRM free (and can even be run outside of Steam). Someone mentions cloud saves, but this has nothing to do with the state of the games (and setting up a custom cloud service for any file is easy).
From GOG I had hoped for bonus features in terms of concept art, uncompressed soundtrack files (for example the Nintendo 64 version would be a nice bonus), or anything else really apart from just the wads.

It's not a remake or remaster, unfortunatelly.