The /newstuff Chronicles #411

In the end, I think that fmv's review wasn't too off the mark, though it probably hasn't been worded in the best way. Like many community project it perhaps suffers from the hit and miss quality.
From my point of view some of the levels are truely spectacular an some of the most impressive maps i've played. PHML's and dannebubinga come to mind. Also other authors (gggmork and Timeofdeath) have made impressive maps with good gameplay (though they levels kick my ass). There are a lot of miss maps, which might be due to various reasons like last minute speedmapping before submitting a full 32 map megawad.
Sure this wad might not be everyone's cup of tea, some will love it, some will hate it. I feel that the level of arguing about this and the actual feelings towards slaughtermaps is a little unnecessary as the discussion about the slaughtfest wad(s) has come up before.
In the end I see everyones point of view, it's just seems like a pointless argument and an excuse for confrontation. Every person likes different things etc etc. fmv might have not been the right person to review the wad perhaps, though i do feel that he was doing in good intention though the review might be a little biased toward his own opinions and had a lack of balance though I can't say that some of his points are not valid.

Doomguy 2000 said:

According to certain logic you're not allowed to criticize Slaughterfest otherwise you're an idiot of suck at this game.

Hey that's like one step down from dissin' John Romero! It just ain't done man. Now go make a slaughtermap so you can redeem yourself! ;-)

cannonball said:
In the end I see everyones point of view, it's just seems like a pointless argument and an excuse for confrontation.

"Seems" is the key. A world where everything flows "smoothly and naturally" would be wonderful, but discussions are very healthy for communication and progress, even if they carry a lot of redundancy and shit flinging. Brining back that analogy I made with Paraguay, think of democracy and all the headaches and political tediousness it implies, but if you cut it short you get the worst kind of society ever.

myk said:

There's a big difference between hate and some lack of familiarity.

Saying "no, I am not a slaughter god" isn't somehow synonymous with the words "I don't know shit about slaughter maps." For all you know, the reviewer may play slaughter maps frequently, and still not be good. If you're going to criticize Phobus for calling the reviewer average, I have to criticize you for baselessly claiming the person is unfamiliar with slaughter maps.

myk said:

the issue here is wasting a review on pretty useless and predictable commentary (a mere extension with some details of "this is too hard") rather than really addressing its worth as a slaughter map set

The reviewer did address the wad's worth. You either deliberately ignore or fail to read. I'll quote again:

"a map may be playable and possible, but that doesn't mean it's well-designed or well-textured"
"It also doesn't mean that the map won't be boring."
"If you want a good slaughter megaWAD experience, try some of the classics"

The concept of worth to you, as it concerns slaughter maps, apparently revolves solely around the maps' difficulty and not anything else. This is simply not the case for, I would argue, the vast majority of people. I enjoy a good slaughter map as much as the next guy, but if it's boring, ill-designed/textured, and low on creativity, my enjoyment simply won't hold up. The reviewer obviously thought that this was the case for SF2011, and reflected that in the review. You can't just sum the whole review up with the words "this is too hard", because there's much more to it, whether or not you wish to acknowledge it.

myk said:

"Seems" is the key. A world where everything flows "smoothly and naturally" would be wonderful, but discussions are very healthy for communication and progress, even if they carry a lot of redundancy and shit flinging. Brining back that analogy I made with Paraguay, think of democracy and all the headaches and political tediousness it implies, but if you cut it short you get the worst kind of society ever.

Very true, in the end a world where everything flows "smoothly and naturally" is probably just a pipedream. Drunkenness makes me far too politically correct.
For sf2011, let's just say this pitches exactly in the middle of whatever rating systems you want (5/10 etc), hence the good and bad feelings to the wad. I don't think it was GRB or Timeofdeath's objective to start a debate about slaughtermaps but it certainly has now. I guess it's simple. If you don't like slaughtermaps then don't play it, you also have to respect that some of the maps will not have the architectual beauty of insanegazebo's sunder maps, which i feel might be some people's benchmark for slaughters (please correct me if i've been a bit harsh). But I'm sure that as this series develops, i'm sure that the mapping will get better, just like other community project series (community chest is a prime example, as the first wad was pretty good, to ccchest 3 being pretty awesome to the majority of the forum anxious awaiting the 4th installment of the series)

Vordakk said:
The concept of worth to you, as it concerns slaughter maps, apparently revolves solely around the maps' difficulty and not anything else.

What I've been saying is that I think the difficulty hampered his assessment of the WAD as a slaughter map, especially because he didn't use other means to get around that problem. That's a particular issue with this WAD and this review, but the difficulty of slaughter maps varies greatly. Slaughter maps are mainly defined by the fact that you get to fight against large hordes of monsters, so you can thus cause a genuine slaughter. This can range from very hard (relatively tight item placement and strategically difficult positioning of the hordes) to pretty easy (lots of ammo and health and relatively forgiving placement of the multitudes.)

Blah, I'm starting to hate the term 'slaughter' and its diversive individualistic interpretation which is just riping for much misunderstanding. I mean, for example both newgothic and slaughterfest are considered in its entirety as obvious examples of 'slaughter' genre. AB maps in general are however by all means easy, there is a major overabundance of powerups and most of those maps are rather friendly to newbies (I could beat that shai'tan's map 29 when I was in state of highly disliking maps with just too high monstercount), but when you stumble upon tod's or gmork's maps, it's unlikely that you'd beat them even if you are mildly experienced and even though monster counts may be lower by half or even quarter compared to majority of AB maps. Yet they are still considered all 'slaughter' as if it was some storage term for obscure stuff that only weirdos bother with. As I said, in its current shape it just ripes for misunderstanding.

Also it would be cool if texture arguments could be calmed down a bit when there's talk about this dumb term, as it really is implication of gameplay oriented thing - with that being said, feel free to note the looks, but don't use it as the most important reason because of which you should refrain from playing 'slaughter' (I really hate that word now) - it's the gameplay which needs comments and into more details than 'olol dayum many monsters let's do some cheats'. For example in sf there's a plenty of ways to show this off, there are some dumb monster placements, even some dumber one-layer-two-texture speedmaps that were untested before submitting, but then you have maps by gameplay specialists, possibly the best players to ever record demos and the gameplay is just plain brilliant. Is it really that unobvious?

Randomly, I tried Slaughterfest with my Super Chicken mod, and it worked pretty well. It was still pretty hard, but it became more like a puzzle on how to avoid enough damage to get to where I needed to go and to get there with enough weapon power to kill whatever's guarding what I need to hit. It's still probably incredibly niche, perhaps even more so, but I had fun with it.

Especially since the maps tended to put weapons right where you started, meaning you were stuck in a monitor, meaning that to actually start the map, you had to alert all the monsters. That was completely unintentional, but it actually made it all puzzly and stuff instead of just 'hey let's just fly over everything hurp durf."

I didn't expect my POS to get reviewed, especially in that manner. =P
I can't really tell if most of that were sarcasm, hehe.
Thanks anyways. =P

This brought a tear to my eye.

Just like all those years ago when I argued that people who don't like '94 wads have no place reviewing them.

IIRC I had my bout with the topic of less-than-skilled reviewers as well.

While the issue of qualifications isn't as important in reviewing as it is in beta-testing, you just can't argue that someone who admits they can't even beat a map properly is qualified to review it.

Unless you're okay with reading a wall of text that doesn't bring any worthwhile insights.

Belial said:

you just can't argue that someone who admits they can't even beat a map properly is qualified to review it.

Oh really, because I think I can very easily argue just that.

In other words, if I made a map that was a massive open room(with no columns or architecture to hide behind) filled with lava dealing 20 damage per tic, featuring 150 chaingunners perched upon a wall and 200 Cyberdemons in the lava, with no invulnerability spheres, and you failed to beat that wad, you wouldn't be qualified to say that it sucks as a wad?

Belial said:

Unless you're okay with reading a wall of text that doesn't bring any worthwhile insights.

Maybe they weren't worthwhile to you, but I found them to be pretty well-said and accurate, as did many others here. Of course, as mere mortals, our opinions have no relevance or merit, right?

hex11 said:

Hey that's like one step down from dissin' John Romero! It just ain't done man. Now go make a slaughtermap so you can redeem yourself! ;-)

No. You, of all people, a vanilla purist obnoxious about anything else, do not get to play that card, and certainly not on DW, where opening a thread without finding someone complaining about revenants, chaingunners, arch-viles or cyberdemons being "misused" is a challenge in itself. Go to Deus Vult hell, do not pass entryway, do not collect a BFG.

Vordakk said:

The review was aimed at the average DOOM player, and it successfully communicated what that player will likely encounter if he or she plays the wad.

Am I getting this right? Slaughterfest was reviewed from the perspective of the 'average doomer', even though no self-proclaimed 'average doomer' would bother playing Slaughterfest..since it's a giant slaughterfest. And this is supposed to make sense? Speaking of which, I'm really interested in how the new Ferrari 458 Spider handles, I'm going to find the opinion of an 64 year old retired grandma who drives it to the laundromat once a week. Also Vordakk, when your next album comes out don't forget to send a copy to the local country radio station, I'd like to hear their highly informed opinion of it.

Vordakk said:

In other words, if I made a map that was a massive open room(with no columns or architecture to hide behind) filled with lava dealing 20 damage per tic, featuring 150 chaingunners perched upon a wall and 200 Cyberdemons in the lava, with no invulnerability spheres, and you failed to beat that wad, you wouldn't be qualified to say that it sucks as a wad?

Absurd examples don't help your case.

But you already knew that as you were writing your shitpost.

Belial said:

Absurd examples don't help your case.

The lack of an effective retort that isn't some vague attempt at condescension doesn't help your case. My side has already won, all your side can do now is argue in circles or pretend that I'm a troll so you can claim the high ground.

Vordakk said:

The lack of an effective retort that isn't some vague attempt at condescension doesn't help your case. My side has already won, all your side can do now is argue in circles or pretend that I'm a troll so you can claim the high ground.

again with this crap. it's just a pissing contest for you, isn't it?

EDIT: you've edited in a bad case of danth's law, gg.

I don't know who's winning that argument, but I know who is losing it: those who open the thread hoping to find an interesting discussion.

The thread has gotten so many replies because a certain group of people can't criticism, and no I'm not jealous of the fact that this is getting so much attention because somebody says I'm jealous when I brought valid points to the table.

I can smell an award in "best thread of 2012".

To be honest, my biggest complaint about the sf2011 review is that we never get an explanation for the mysterious note: "more on map 31 in a bit."

Vordakk said:
Maybe they weren't worthwhile to you,

That's almost like you are coming to terms. Personally, I don't have an issue with it addressing a more general audience (while I don't believe in the "average doomer") as well, that's good, but the problem others saw was that it didn't really address the audience looking for these types of WAD (whether or not they will like it in particular). Who else can complain about that than that audience itself, and any related people?

Gez said:
I don't know who's winning that argument, but I know who is losing it: those who open the thread hoping to find an interesting discussion.

Please man, that's unnecessary and discouraged in the FAQ. Look how it just triggered two shitposts, and more could come from there. It's enough with the noise we made in the discussion, no need to add more crap to make it worse and ruin what good it may bring. Just ignore the thread if it's so bad to you, as the rules suggest, or at least add the complaint as an aside to a real post.

Snakes said:

To be honest, my biggest complaint about the sf2011 review is that we never get an explanation for the mysterious note: "more on map 31 in a bit."

ROTFLMAO!!

Doomguy 2000 said:

The thread has gotten so many replies because a certain group of people can't criticism

There was almost no criticism in the review that started it all, - there were blatantly false statements ("only 11 maps are possible"), ridiculous claims ("terrible monster placement") and absence of logic and structure ("zomg so hard, but there are bex files to ease everything, but they're stupid 2million ammo lol bad"). The review is insultingly subpar for a wad of this caliber. He even goes as far as saying it's better to stick to classic slaughter wads. Currently (at least among skulltag/zdaemon slaughter-crew i play with, and demorecorders) it's considered one of the better examples of a slaugher-type wads. So, if you like hard slaugherwads, you would probably like this one too. Being subjective is ok (we all are), but all these mistakes combined are just over the top. Author seems to have failed to study the subject properly before taking on the task of reviewing it.
p.s. also, fmv, if you think some trap is too hard, or is impossible, consider watching demos first. Maybe you missed some trick, or maybe you didn't come up with a proper strategy, and it's actually not that hard at all if you take your time to understand the map.

jongo mentions something that has bothered me before when fmv and vordakk used it - "classic slaughter wads". what are these timeless classics that are well reknowned for their quality and approachability (is that a word?) by the "average doomer"? why wasn't there a direct comparison to something superior within the same genre?

edit: apparently hr2 is mentioned passingly. but that's a mediocre sluggish spamfest! "find a safe corner and spam till things don't move", not "constant fire, constant movement, constant danger".

It appears as though certain people simply can't handle stuff they like being criticized, so much so that they will childishly argue the ignorance and incompetence of the reviewer in order to hopefully invalidate the reviewer's opinion. So since FMV reviewing SF2011 was supposedly akin to a country station reviewing my new heavy metal album, the answer is clear. Those possessing a clearly superior grasp of higher pwad art should strike out and form their own website, where they can review these treasured wads like the experts they are. That way you can give wads like this the 6 out of 5 they richly deserve, and laugh as us troglodytes flounder in an attempt to rate wads whose merit we have no chance of appreciating.

dew said:

hr2 is mentioned passingly. but that's a mediocre sluggish spamfest!

Pretty sure Hell Revealed 2 received a Cacoward in 2004. Damn, I bet FMV or one of those other mental defectives was responsible for giving out an award unjustly!

Vordakk, I think you should understand that people aren't disappointed with the review because it's negative. If hardcore slaughter fan gave a negative review I'm sure there wouldn't be this massive argument.

Processingcontrol said:

If hardcore slaughter fan gave a negative review I'm sure there wouldn't be this massive argument.

I guess that should've been me, because so far I didn't like any of the first 7 maps. map01 has an awesome opening, but then it devolves into a maze. map02 and map07 a bit more interesting than the others, but I guess Grain of Salt just isn't my kind of mapper.

dew: h232, ow11, sc26, dv03, stuff like that. I'm tempted to say 1squares because it just feels so relevant when you look at maps like Lull :P

Belial said:

I guess that should've been me, because so far I didn't like any of the first 7 maps.

I'd be genuinely interested in your thoughts when you're done with it, especially if you'd be disappointed with it overall - it's not like sf is a pinnacle of slaughter stuff whatsoever.

Unsurprisingly, this argument boils down to fanboys (of the style; of the .WAD itself; whatever) versus the general public. We've got a range of viewpoints from the fanboy side, varying from elitist to almost philosophical - some of which hold water with me, part of the opposition, and a lot of which don't. My part in this argument is undermined by the fact that I practice what the fanboys are preaching (don't review things that you're not the target audience for) even though I actually support the .WAD getting a generalistic review. Fact is somebody just as "uninformed" as fmv33 could have liked the project and, as Belial is nicely proving, even those who are "qualified" to hold opinions of such things won't necessarily like it or even give a much more detailed analysis.

Retrospectively I do see a little merit in *some* of the reasons being given against the review (certainly nothing that jongo said though), but I still think the sum total of the opposition is just butthurt. There's no need for so much hate and vitriol for that review when considerably worse ones are given fairly often and nobody bats an eyelid just because the subject isn't their preferred type of project. Fact is the only "qualification" anybody needs to write a review is that they have a DW forums account and can run the .WAD in the intended game mode. Obviously we hope that the entire project is played (and in this case, it actually was) so that they've seen everything and can take that into account, but we don't always get that guarantee (anybody remember ZPack and the flames that followed that review?)

All told, fmv33 put more time and effort into that review than I've done for any of my reviews (except "Hell Awakened..."), from his account of the reviewing process, which to me just further weakens the "he didn't take the time to study" argument.

Phobus said:

...(certainly nothing that jongo said though)...

Actually I believe that he hit the spot 100% accurately, those are actually the very reasons behind this nice chatter. If points he pointed out were not present or taken care of properly in the review, there'd be absolutely no argument at all in the first place. If there is/was anybody dragging something outstide jongo's post into the subject, like criticism or whining or whatever, the reason why there's been any discussion going on wasn't understood at all. fmv's review seems like a stream of thoughts that came into mind chaotically after playing without an attempt to sort them. Some bad wording that he/she even admitted to after chatter beginning and the map 31 more-on-it-later thing just makes me think of it that way. But to be honest, when sf hit idgames, I expected a much worse review.