Am i too old for doom or something?

I didn't get 'in' to doom until roughly 2003, meaning mods and playing a lot more (I played the games back in the mid to late 90s, but was basically done before 2000.)

Between 2003 and now, I would say each year I spend atleast a fourth of it not touching doom at all. I'm actually thinking I will stop playing doom for the next couple months.

You burn yourself out and it takes way too long to get back into it.

I took me 4 years to be able to listen to some of my old favorite bands again.

I've been somewhat bored with Doom wads for several years. Once in a while the urge to play comes back and I go for a couple of maps. These days I mostly go back for inspiration to our Doom3 project. Classic Doom mappers are lightyears ahead of most 3D mappers in terms of verticality.

I know a lot of people told me it's best to take a long break, but i can't help myself - i just start up zdoom again and again. Right now i'm playing through WoS, Heroes' Tales and motornerve, and i really want to beat plutonia 2 and the first two scythes after those, and i also want to try and play deus vult... And yeah, i ALSO really want to beat both heretic and hexen sometime. Oh man.

And yes, every time i quit fairly quickly after beating one or two levels and dying a bunch... I wonder how do people record the demos of them playing wads for the first time so easily, i very rarely can beat a new level without dying at every second major ambush.

I would go to mapping for other games, that usually makes me forget about doom very quick, but as i said - i have to go with whatever editor i have the inspiration to work in, and currently it's still DoomBuilder (2) :(

Shaviro said:

Classic Doom mappers are lightyears ahead of most 3D mappers in terms of verticality.

That's ironic =/

On topic I have nothing really to add to what's been said.

Alot of what phi108 said applied to me, but then I realised forcing myself into some mould of how everyone else plays Doom wasn't much fun.

I have ever-growing folders of unplayed PWADs, which I then sort into years when I find a keeper. I'll try get thru a couple a week but it's no big deal. It did used to be tho, it felt like a chore, but somewhere along the line I just stopped caring. I'll probably just go delete all the non-famous ones one day.

And I certainly do hate Doom 2 megawads. I don't have the patience to sit down and play 30+ levels in one sitting, and considering it takes me about a week to get thru a Doom 1 length episode, I don't want to play the same thing for a month straight either. I've only finished Doom 2 itself about 4 or 5 times.

I'll happily play single maps and anything up to an Episode-length mapset. I even love a good 45-minute or 1.5-hour wad, but even something as good as AV only gets the first ~10 levels of play from me before I'm bored and want something else. When I want to play for serious then I'll run tho one of the first three episodes, and I found B2B to be pretty much perfect for how I want to play.

I am no great mapper either, sometimes I'll come up with something I'm happy with but most of the time I'm just pissing around in DB1 and end up saving it in my "ideas" folder. I have something I'm working on now but bursts of inspiration for new good ideas are few and far between.

I dunno, don't assume anything. I know I don't like megawads or slaughter maps but I'll try play one every now and then just to see if my tastes have changed. I like mostly classic gameplay too but I still play ZDoom wads with all the fancy new features, some of them are really good.

And it's not like people here all constantly play Doom, or even do Doom-related things. Quite a few folks around here dedicate more time to MMORPGs and still crank out high-quality Doom maps.

Don't worry about what other people think, and just do whatever ends up being fun for you. If that isn't playing Doom for a while then that's just how it is :)

Um i worry about getting bored of doom not because i think everyone else plays it constantly and so should i :D

Antroid said:
And yes, every time i quit fairly quickly after beating one or two levels and dying a bunch... I wonder how do people record the demos of them playing wads for the first time so easily, i very rarely can beat a new level without dying at every second major ambush.

Turn down the difficulty.

If i play on difficulties lower than UV i always feel that i'm missing something potentially more interesting and just don't enjoy it even for the first twenty minutes.

Plus, the guys that do their first demos often play on UV, and i just can't comprehend how quick they need to think and react to not die at least once their first time on a level that's any challenge at all (i.e. has any surprise ambushes or something).

Antroid said:
If i play on difficulties lower than UV i always feel that i'm missing something potentially more interesting and just don't enjoy it even for the first twenty minutes.

Dying every 3 seconds is "potentially more interesting"?

Antroid said:
Plus, the guys that do their first demos often play on UV, and i just can't comprehend how quick they need to think and react to not die at least once their first time on a level that's any challenge at all (i.e. has any surprise ambushes or something).

Maybe they're better at Doom? The game got a lot more fun for me when I realized I was too young to die.

I played primarily on HMP for many years, and still will if I can't beat something on UV or suspect it's going to be too hard. When I play a few levels of a mega-hard wad like AV or HR2 I'll usually play on HNTR because I'm a pussy :P

I've tried for fun to match a few demos I've seen around here and it amazes me how well people can actually play, and some of the first-plays of hard maps are something I'll probably never achieve. I'm cool with that, you should be too. There are always going to be people better at you, even some top Compet-N runs are still being broken. Watch tatsurdcacocaco on YouTube!

With difficulty levels you're only missing monster placement, and you've seen all the monsters before. Are you trying to prove something or are you trying to have fun? I think you need to chill out and play Doom for yourself, not to be better than other people or to impress the internet :)

Antroid said:
Right now i'm playing through WoS, Heroes' Tales and motornerve, and i really want to beat plutonia 2 and the first two scythes after those, and i also want to try and play deus vult... And yeah, i ALSO really want to beat both heretic and hexen sometime. Oh man.

Ah yes, the urge to have played and seen everything aka "so much great stuff to play, so little time". The mind does play tricks like that sometimes. It's more important to enjoy what you're playing at the very moment though, otherwise you might have trouble with staying focused at all.

Myself I play many other games, but Doom is one of the few always worth coming back to. Just don't force yourself and enjoy your gaming time.

Dying every 3 seconds is "potentially more interesting"?

I didn't say every three seconds. Do asshole chaingunner ambushes happen every three seconds? No. But once such a thing happens, there is a chance i'm gonna do something stupid, or just not notice something and die. And yes, even HMP is sometimes too easy and feels almost like playing with cheat codes, like Tourist mode in serious sam, where your health regenerates, you take less damage, and enemies take more damage. I know the changes are less drastic in doom, but it still feels like i'm wasting time, like there could be maybe slightly more challenge, and challenge is always fun as long as it is fair. I mean, if i was guaranteed that UV = unfair challenges, and HMP = not any easier but more fair, i'd play on HMP all the time.

Maybe they're better at Doom? The game got a lot more fun for me when I realized I was too young to die.

Well, i'm good at doom theoretically, but i guess i don't have fast enough reflexes or something. Being better at a game is something that's easy to imagine, but, like, being able to think five times as fast and stay focused all the time no matter what happens (what i feel is required sometimes) is not, and that's why i really can't imagine ever getting better. Sometimes it feels like with every step you take you need to constantly know the best ways to cover and run in case enemies like chaingunners or archviles pop up in any direction, separate strategies ready for enemies behind me, enemies in front of me, enemies at the sides, different types of enemies, all at once and without a break.

Hey man, if you don't feel like playing doom, don't play doom. Keep coming here, keep tabs on what's out, but don't play if you don't want. I've been spending my evenings with FF7 lately rather than doom (mostly since I don't have enough computer access to play WoS yet).

And there's nothing wrong with not playing on UV. That's what the other difficulty settings are for, and if the wad is good, the easier settings should be just as interesting for those intended skill sets.

That's the thing (and i explained it already actually), i want to play a doom wad very often, then quickly quit, and then after a very short time i get the urge to play again, because there's just so much freaking raw entertainment sitting there waiting for me. But then this raw entertainment doesn't hold up to the expectations once again, even if i know perfectly what i'm going into, i still expect to have a lot of fun every time.
Actually, sometimes i do have a lot of fun and while i still quit fairly quickly, i don't quit angry or annoyed or bored, and that's probably why i can't just tell myself to stop playing doom for a few months.
I wish they cured this in mental institutions.

And about the difficulty, well, i played a lot of wads that are considered masterpieces, and with the exception of deus vult and AV playing on HMP or lower always results with no enjoyment at all. I'd enjoy atmosphere or something, but a big part of doom's atmosphere for me is desperation and challenge. Are there good wads where the difficulty comes from, say, lack of ammo and health, and you have to run past enemies or use your fists often, and be very very careful and selective with who you actually shoot? I'd probably really enjoy something like that, even if it sounds illogical. (i now even want to make my maps play like that, but nobody else would probably like it, so i won't)

Antroid said:
I didn't say every three seconds. Do asshole chaingunner ambushes happen every three seconds? No. But once such a thing happens, there is a chance i'm gonna do something stupid, or just not notice something and die. And yes, even HMP is sometimes too easy and feels almost like playing with cheat codes, like Tourist mode in serious sam, where your health regenerates, you take less damage, and enemies take more damage. I know the changes are less drastic in doom, but it still feels like i'm wasting time, like there could be maybe slightly more challenge, and challenge is always fun as long as it is fair. I mean, if i was guaranteed that UV = unfair challenges, and HMP = not any easier but more fair, i'd play on HMP all the time.

Those are things that make the game fun. I'd rather have that than have 15 of the same enemies and situations just to make the game "fair".

Antroid said:
Well, i'm good at doom theoretically, but i guess i don't have fast enough reflexes or something. Being better at a game is something that's easy to imagine, but, like, being able to think five times as fast and stay focused all the time no matter what happens (what i feel is required sometimes) is not, and that's why i really can't imagine ever getting better. Sometimes it feels like with every step you take you need to constantly know the best ways to cover and run in case enemies like chaingunners or archviles pop up in any direction, separate strategies ready for enemies behind me, enemies in front of me, enemies at the sides, different types of enemies, all at once and without a break.

Once you've played a game long enough, those times where you think you need to be superhuman to do something just become second nature.

Those are things that make the game fun. I'd rather have that than have 15 of the same enemies and situations just to make the game "fair".

You mean all the traps and ambushes you stand little chance against unless you know about them in advance? I don't find this fun at all. I mean yeah, MAYBE if i was a lot better nothing of that would give me trouble, but if getting better means suffering through that beforehand, i'd rather stay mediocre at doom. And keep complaining. Yeah...
Also, i think a lot of the things that can happen in a level can make it fun, even with doom's engine there's a LOT of possibilities. And "things happening" are not limited to fucking you over with archviles you didn't expect or something :D

Anyway, my question about low health/ammo still stands and i'd very much like to find such a wad or also know if anybody else would find it interesting.

Antroid said:

Anyway, my question about low health/ammo still stands and i'd very much like to find such a wad or also know if anybody else would find it interesting.

You could always just play the IWADs and not pick up any ammo or health?

You could also try playing on -fast.

Super Jamie said:

You could always just play the IWADs and not pick up any ammo or health?

You could also try playing on -fast.

Naah, not picking up stuff just isn't the same. If there WAS stuff, but i'd have to hunt for evey four shotgun shells, i'd probably enjoy it a lot. But if i just ignore all the pickups i'd have to choose when to finally pick something up and that doesn't work.
Also i'd better beat everything i wanted to on just UV before even trying playing on -fast. D:

Antroid said:

Naah, not picking up stuff just isn't the same. If there WAS stuff, but i'd have to hunt for evey four shotgun shells, i'd probably enjoy it a lot. But if i just ignore all the pickups i'd have to choose when to finally pick something up and that doesn't work.
Also i'd better beat everything i wanted to on just UV before even trying playing on -fast. D:

Then copy your IWAD and rip all the non-monster Things out of a map. E2M2 is fairly large, E3M2 would be challengine without items to help you.

Play in ITYTD -fast :P

My single-player movement skills were developed in deathmatches. Fighting opponents on an equal or greater standing than you is a great natural motivator to improve your agility.

I can almost always survive surprise ambushes the first time I see them, when playing levels with the community's standard UV difficulty. I don't pause every 5 seconds to reformulate a list of the best possible tactic for every possible situation. What I do comes very naturally, so I don't think of it as a list of strategies, but if I were to think of it as a list of strategies then this is how I would write it down:

-Remain aware of your immediate spatial surroundings. You don't have to memorize anything. Just retain a feeling of where you can move and where you can't. When you walk out of your bedroom and start walking down your hallway, you don't immediately forget where your bedroom is. Even when facing away from your room's doorway, you have a natural sense of where it is, so that you could quickly duck back into it without looking for it if you hear your sister approaching, and you happen to be wandering the house naked. That's how you should feel about your surroundings in Doom.

-Always keep the best weapon at the ready for the sort of environment you're in. When you're in a cramped space, like a tight hallway, or a lift that brings you somewhere you haven't explored yet, hold a rapid-fire weapon at the ready. Plasma rifle if you've got it, chaingun if you don't. In fact, a rapid-fire weapon is pretty much always the best weapon to have ready, because when those surprise chaingunners appear, you can keep them in pain and unable to fight. You don't need to keep mental track of the best strategy for every monster you might run into, because there are only two strategies: if you're ambushed by dangerous monsters, kill them with the powerful weapon you have drawn. If you run into non-threatening monsters, then you have time to switch to another weapon with cheaper ammo, because the monsters aren't a threat. Kill them and then switch back to your powerful weapon.

-Remember the rules of level logic. Mappers always make it clear (perhaps unintentionally) what's going to happen in each part of a map. Reading maps in this way is natural to me, because I've just played so much Doom, and if it isn't natural to you then I guess you'll have to keep a few basics in mind. When you see a valuable item, like a powerup, weapon, or most especially, a key, you should know that something's going to happen when you take it. The best strategy then is to plan your movements so that you can grab the item and then move away as quickly as possible. Thanks to the delay before monsters can teleport in, you can often evade the ambush entirely and avoid being surrounded. An exception to this "valuable items = ambush" rule is when you find a cache of valuable ammo for a weapon you already have. This usually means that you're going to need that weapon for the next part of the map (so get it ready). If you find this ammo cache in a dead end and you aren't ambushed immediately, then some powerful new monsters have probably teleported into areas of the level that you've already visited, and must return to.

I will note that I think the best level design expects the player to have a solid sense of traditional Doom logic, and then defeats that logic by contriving traps in clever ways that play upon the player's expectations. But you don't see that sort of design all that often.

The third rule is the easiest, i believe i have it down. For the second rule, i tend to have a shotgun out most of the time... probably a bad idea. The first one is the hardest: you see, i do remember my own place because i've lived here for 21 years. But when in doom, i ususally step into a new location, sometimes fairly complicated, and am already in danger because enemies i can't even find yet are already halfway done with killing me. :(

Antroid said:

For the second rule, i tend to have a shotgun out most of the time... probably a bad idea.

Yes, very.

Antroid said:

The first one is the hardest: you see, i do remember my own place because i've lived here for 21 years. But when in doom, i ususally step into a new location, sometimes fairly complicated, and am already in danger because enemies i can't even find yet are already halfway done with killing me. :(

Hm... you might actually benefit from playing Thief: the Dark Project. It could be useful training for your spatial awareness. If it isn't, at least it will teach you to use due caution.

Yes, very.

Well damn. I guess i'm not even good at doom theoretically.

Also Thief freezes on my PC. Too bad; i wanted to play it for long, even gone as far as "borrow" an actual CD from someone (forever).

Also also some things you say make me really anxious to finish up my levels and see what you'll think of them, because even if the execution quality may remain appropriate for a person's first wad, we do have very similiar ideas sometimes on what a good level benefits from.

Creaphis said:

Yes, very.

Don't listen to this guy. Just use those shotguns, they're more fun and this is a game after all. Besides, most ambushes are very much survivable through evasion skills alone.

To be a good player you don't necessarily need complex weapon strategies (just SSG everything and induce infighting), fast reflexes or even a steady aim. You'll be best served by instincts well honed through years of playing, a keen eye and a good sense of your surroundings.

LordK said:
To be a good player you don't necessarily need complex weapon strategies (just SSG everything and induce infighting), fast reflexes or even a steady aim.

Surely you can improve while using just one weapon, and the shotguns are pretty versatile, but good weapon use makes a world of difference, in addition to giving the game a good deal more variety. So yes, listen to Creaphis :p

Slaughter maps in particular should get pretty dull using only firearms, while massacring masses with the rocket launcher or BFG can be honed down to an artform.

Super Jamie said:

I played primarily on HMP for many years, and still will if I can't beat something on UV or suspect it's going to be too hard. When I play a few levels of a mega-hard wad like AV or HR2 I'll usually play on HNTR because I'm a pussy :P

I play all the hard WADs on ITYTD, but even that isn't easy enough sometimes. I did pretty good in Alien Vendetta up until MAP26 (Dark Dome) where I consistently get slaughtered within seconds, so I haven't progressed beyond. It's too bad, because it was on its way to being my favorite Doom2 megawad, but I think Memento Mori 2 is better overall. I'm in this for the atmosphere mainly, not so much the slaughterfest (though some of that is okay, so long as it's not totally insane).

HR & HR2, I simply acknowledge as not for me. I'm not a skilled, hardcore Doom player, nor do I wish to become one.

I don't think you can technically be "too old" for an M rated game. What you're describing is probably just a loss of interest. It happens to all of us.

Personally, I go through gamer fatigue all the time. I'll make a new character in oblivion or fallout, play in what I thought would be a new and unique way, and it all just boils down to the same gameplay (stab it, shoot it, bash it, magic it to death, whatever, kill this(these)). What I do is completely switch genres.

Bored with RPGs (oblivion, fallout) throw down on some FPS. Bored of FPS, throw down on some strategy (zomg Civ ftw). Sick of trying to make my zombie apocolypse civ campaign (yeah, I said it, zombie apocolypse civ map, what?), beat a final fantasy or two (no, for serious, pick a good linear one like 4 or 5 so you don't get tempted by long, boring sidequests, and go for low-level runs, like in 5 you master red mage, time mage, black/white mage (either one, doesn't matter), and pick up mime, then quick x-,magic x-death to death... lol he got two actions last time I fought him). Maybe you should forgo categories of games you're familiar with altogether, and throw down on some good ol' abandonware, there's more free games out there than you could possibly shake a stick at.

Then again, it could also be that you just aren't into playing games like you used to be. Nothing wrong with that, there are all sorts of people who love video games but don't play them. Maybe you should just stick to mapping for a while. Get some ideas together, write them out, and only load up a game to see if the map looks the way you intended it to look. Maybe you should take a break from all games for a month or two. Of course, I'm not talking about drinking games, I mean video games. Nothing makes me miss my favorite games like not being able to play them. If you're on your computer, watch some south park episodes (southparkstudios.com official site, every episode free), or check out the shows section of youtube (original star trek anyone?), or, there's always drugs :P

Awesome suggestions! %)