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40oz

Have wads gotten harder?

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Is it just me or has doom gotten more difficult over time? Perhaps it would make more sense to ask if there is a higher appeal to mappers to make bigger and harder maps in the last couple years than there were in the past? Wads like Alien Vendetta and Hell Revealed 2 still hold up pretty well today but it seems that people catering to slaughters and speedrunning are becoming more the norm now than it perhaps was several years ago. Is my memory foggy or has the expectations of the skill set of the average doomer been raised?

I'm happily welcoming this trend, of course, but I like to believe that my skill in Doom is improving over the long term, excepting some days where I've been away from the computer for weeks and need some time to warm up. Yet, the general public tends to be more and more enthused with traps and deadly monster ambushes making commonplace maps surprisingly more difficult than my usual expectations. I wonder if it has a correlation with live streaming and speedrunning being more mainstream recently as well.

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Compared to '93, for sure. But that's an easy answer -- I'm more curious to know what the curve looks like over time to see if things have plateau-ed.

The ultra-hardcore slaughterstuff (e.g. holyhell) is sure to bump the scales a bit, at any rate.

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One reason could be because crouching, jumping, and mouse aiming have become more common place in source ports and, when you can aim, maps meant for Chocolate Doom are naturally going to feel a lot easier, at least in my opinion. They have to amp up the difficulty to compensate for that.

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I can't really keep up with the top end of modern difficulty and frankly I die a few times on each Alien Vendetta level, BTSX level and so forth before a plan to win really coalesces in my mind. I don't practise much and have never really strayed into deathmatch so my skills are antique anyway. then again, Hell Revealed came out relatively early on in the life-span of Doom modding and is replete with merciless and miserable combat scenarios that tempt me to cheat =P

I wonder if it's possible to argue that Doom Builder helps us make harder maps?

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I don't approve of common slaughter maps. It turns the game from an enjoying fast paced Doom experience to a stressful THINK FAST OR DIE, RUN! MANAGE YOUR AMMO! NO YOU IDIOT YOU SHOULD OF SAVED WHILE YOU HAD A BREATHER! YOU IDIOT YOU TOOK THE ORB BEFORE YOU GOT AMBUSHED! HA YOU RAN FROM THE ARMY OF REVENANTS AND INTO 2 CYBERDEMONS!

Yeah, a real treat.

Maybe 1 slaughter map in every Megawad is fine. While I can appreciate the effort put into these maps it still feels like a lazy persons method of creating an exciting experience. It's a like movie director non stop using shaky cam, explosions and sudden panning. Action without any real detail or love.

Now making every experience from small (even with just trash mobs) and large an enjoyable experience is an achievement that needs more consideration than frequent teleport ambushes and overwhelming odds.

This may be controversial but I do think the increase of slaughter maps over the years is both lazyness and a desperate attempt to rekindle their spark in Doom via intense difficulty.

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Chezza said:

This may be controversial but I do think the increase of slaughter maps over the years is both lazyness and a desperate attempt to rekindle their spark in Doom via intense difficulty.

It's kind of like the Super Mario ROMhacks that are basically all impossible and people pretty much only play them so they can impress their friends or people on YouTube.

I do think Doom WADs are getting tougher, and I kind of lament the loss of more "casual" WADs that put you up against tolerable odds on a more regular basis. On the other hand, a lot of people who're playing Doom WADs now have been playing the game for a decade or two and know most of the ins and outs of Doom's gameplay, so they need more nasty surprises in order to stave off boredom.

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Chezza said:

Maybe 1 slaughter map in every Megawad is fine. While I can appreciate the effort put into these maps it still feels like a lazy persons method of creating an exciting experience.

Sounds like you're the lazy person for not practising enough.

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Meh, so long as the wad has a sufficiently easy ITYTD difficulty to compensate for my old man reflexes, I really don't mind how hard these young 'uns make their UV maps. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to visit the little boy's room for the umpteenth time today.

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TimeOfDeath said:

Sounds like you're the lazy person for not practising enough.


Each to their own. But I unwillingly played too many slaughter maps with 100% completion and now very much over it. You may love it though, so be it. How about you post a youtube video of yourself playing 5 slaughter-maps in the row and claim you loved it. It would be like eating gravel and saying it taste like chocolate to prove a point in defense of your useless ego.

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Chezza said:

Each to their own. But I unwillingly played too many slaughter maps with 100% completion and now very much over it. You may love it though, so be it. How about you post a youtube video of yourself playing 5 slaughter-maps in the row and claim you loved it. It would be like eating gravel and saying it taste like chocolate to prove a point in defense of your useless ego.


...You don't know who TimeOfDeath is, do you

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Chezza: This little corner of The Internet is, shall we say, 'replete' with concrete evidence that TimeOfDeath (and many others) does indeed have a genuine passion for slaughtermaps (and other challenge-oriented levels), in spite of your persistent intimations here and elsewhere that those not sharing your specific viewpoint are lying both to themselves and to everyone else. One need only take a quick look around to find it, but of course I'm sure you will feel no need to do so, secure in your unassailable fortress of Reason as you are.

In answer to the OP's question, well....I think it probably is accurate to say that difficult Doom maps are somewhat more common now than they would've been 10-15 years ago, and that the upper bound of difficulty is higher as well. In a sense, I'd say this is a result not only of longtime players honing their skills through the years, but of an incidental process of escalation in difficulty over time arising from the fact that difficult WADs often come to be seen as notable in a way that 'casual' WADs do not (and thus more likely to be regularly referenced in hobbyist discourse and seen as a source of inspiration for new mappers). If you go far back enough in time I think you can find a point where it may be fair to say that the difficulty of a given famous WAD X--we could use the original Hell Revealed as an example, or perhaps old 'certification' WADs ala some of the H2HMUD stuff or the like--was its main point of interest while it was contemporary, which could be taken as lending some credence to the 'brainless brinksmanship' argument one often sees used by some parties to broadly dismiss WADs of certain types in the here and now. I think this is too simplistic an analysis, though; I think high-difficulty WADs have managed to consistently capture much of the community's imagination (including that of content-creators) through time not as a result of intense difficulty per se, but because such WADs have often been lavish productions in every respect, with inspirational aesthetics and many other enjoyable qualities framing their most nettlesomely difficult combat scenarios. This sort of recognition naturally becomes a virtuous cycle of sorts, or something of a self-perpetuating phenomenon over time, and one that we still see in action today. And I couldn't be happier about it, for my part!

That being said, I think we'd be remiss to overlook that, irrespective of the fact that average player skill has probably gone up in the 20+ years of Doom's existence, difficult WADs have been a source of fascination ever since PWADing first took root, so it's not really a new development. I reckon that what 'difficulty' means, and the shape that it takes, just changes over time. Nowadays we might point to complex legion-based megaslaughter maps (for example) as paragons of difficulty, whereas in older generations you might be more likely to see challenge delivered via obtuse puzzles, death-assuring environmental traps, miserly supply rationing (which has persistently been a niche form of difficulty through the ages, in fairness) and the like. As an example, you can look at the DWMC's current playthrough of Icarus, from 1996 or whenever it was; by today's standards much of its combat is trivial, but if you look at the frustration and even agony that the pistol-start in map 01 or especially the YK puzzle in map 08 has caused (and apparently caused players back then, as well), it's hard not to ponder that 'difficulty' can mean more than 'having to dodge hundreds of projectiles from different directions simultaneously.'

All that aside, I certainly think that the market for WADs with a very casual/leisurely level of difficulty (to say nothing of moderate stuff that falls somewhere in between the two extremes) is in absolutely no danger of ever being supplanted by more demanding stuff--many, many, many players of many different levels of skill still enjoy the game that way, where Doomguy is the uncontested apex predator of the realm and the experience is more about enjoying a light workout while exploring the environment and seeing the sights and such.

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TimeOfDeath said:

Sounds like you're the lazy person for not practising enough.


For me, it's more of the loss of control due to fatigue, which, does go away with practice, but even I reach it from time to time and wonder if I'm actually having fun. It's similar to a revelation I had when I was beta-testing DVII; The never-ending green Imp tunnel that I was told would be a legendary meat-grinder of a map section... only to find out that you still have to crank the meat grinder, like playing the Doom equivalent of Desert Bus.

Even the best slaughtermaps spice it up a bit with light action and a breather in-between "arenas", because running like a prehistoric rat during the KT extinction consistently throughout the map isn't a testament to skill, as we can all do that. Anyone that plays Doom can pull that off.

While we're on the subject, forcing the player to gobble up a blur sphere and throw him in a room full of mancubi, like Holy Hell loved to do, is the dictionary definition of being a dick.

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Demon of the Well said:

In answer to the OP's question, well....I think it probably is accurate to say that difficult Doom maps are somewhat more common now than they would've been 10-15 years ago, and that the upper bound of difficulty is higher as well. In a sense, I'd say this is a result not only of longtime players honing their skills through the years, but of an incidental process of escalation in difficulty over time arising from the fact that difficult WADs often come to be seen as notable in a way that 'casual' WADs do not (and thus more likely to be regularly referenced in hobbyist discourse and seen as a source of inspiration for new mappers). If you go far back enough in time I think you can find a point where it may be fair to say that the difficulty of a given famous WAD X--we could use the original Hell Revealed as an example, or perhaps old 'certification' WADs ala some of the H2HMUD stuff or the like--was its main point of interest while it was contemporary, which could be taken as lending some credence to the 'brainless brinksmanship' argument one often sees used by some parties to broadly dismiss WADs of certain types in the here and now. I think this is too simplistic an analysis, though; I think high-difficulty WADs have managed to consistently capture much of the community's imagination (including that of content-creators) through time not as a result of intense difficulty per se, but because such WADs have often been lavish productions in every respect, with inspirational aesthetics and many other enjoyable qualities framing their most nettlesomely difficult combat scenarios. This sort of recognition naturally becomes a virtuous cycle of sorts, or something of a self-perpetuating phenomenon over time, and one that we still see in action today. And I couldn't be happier about it, for my part!

One thing I'll add is that from a "content creator" standpoint, it's actually easier to draw influence from difficult maps than it is from easy ones. When I'm playing a map that forces me to sweat and struggle against it -- something like Sc2 23, HR24, AV26, Resurgence 20, Grime, etc -- I'm naturally piecing together how the encounters work and how all of the parts interact, just in the act of trying to solve the encounter in the first place. In an easy map, I don't really have to pay attention to these kinds of things -- I just run and hold down mouse button 1 -- and thus can't really take as much from what I encounter.

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Maybe the continued preference for UV in players have something to do with this. If we could somehow draw a line graph would the difficulty rise as steeply over time on HMP modes as it would in UV?

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Overall I would say yes, but then there's stuff like the Chord series which I still struggle with; so I think it's more a case of monster counts increasing. Puzzles and traps seem easier now than they did in the early days--probably experience and a more studious approach to level design in recent wads (ie, less random shit)

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"If you like something I don't like, you must be a masochist" is hardly a mature position.

I wonder if Chezza will now join those who scream about Doomworld being a citadel of rude unpleasant nerd elitists, even though he started this exchange.

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Let me put it this way; friends come over and play doom, even friends who play console games, and when they play my levels on 'not too rough' (or anything modern doom) they tend to last under 3 minutes before dying.

I have always thought that in general the modern doom community's difficulty curve to be absurdly hard. But many of these mappers assume you are save-spamming, something I personally loathe doing (though I will if I enjoy the map set enough).

I feel many players also have a 'UV or bust' mentality. If the level is too hard its okay, bump down to the next difficulty. This can be a problem when the lower settings are STILL too hard, or they were done poorly (because the mapper, who is also an excellent player, has no idea how to make an easier encounter exciting).

As a mapper, its okay to make UV as punishing as you want provided it IS beatable, but if that is the case, put some time and effort into adding easier difficulty levels so less skilled players can actually play through, and maybe even enjoy, your levels.

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Da Werecat said:

I wonder if Chezza will now join those who scream about Doomworld being a citadel of rude unpleasant nerd elitists


...why, it is not? ;-)

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Demon of the Well said:

If you go far back enough in time I think you can find a point where it may be fair to say that the difficulty of a given famous WAD X--we could use the original Hell Revealed as an example, or perhaps old 'certification' WADs ala some of the H2HMUD stuff or the like--


H2H-XMAS in particular, one of the oldest megawads in existence, is surprisingly brutal, making the later Memento Mori maps (Dead Man's Town, Showdown etc.) look like a walk in the park by comparison. It's not much of an artistic accomplishment though, unlike 2010s type slaughtermaps which for the most part tend to look superb.

Demon of the Well said:

but because such WADs have often been lavish productions in every respect, with inspirational aesthetics and many other enjoyable qualities framing their most nettlesomely difficult combat scenarios.


Case in point: Resurgence. Whoever is foolish enough to say that the fairly inaccessible nature of Speed of Doom and Resurgence means they sacrificed every other aspect to difficulty understands nothing.

Demon of the Well said:

Whereas in older generations you might be more likely to see challenge delivered via obtuse puzzles, death-assuring environmental traps, miserly supply rationing (which has persistently been a niche form of difficulty through the ages, in fairness) and the like.


Hi, Cleimos II. And yeah, we need only look at the Chord series, or Stuff like Scythe II MAP21-22, Hell Ground MAP06(puzzle-wise), Resurgence MAP21 or Vanguard MAP06 to see that this has not disappeared.

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I've never been anti-slaughtermaps (dietest is a fucking piece of art, still the best slaughterwad by miles) however I've only made a very very select few myself, even then they were tame compared to contemporaries.

Slaughtermaps are a sort of obvious upward curve in difficulty from vanilla/oldschool Doomin'. We love the challenge of being swarmed by lots of monsters, the numbers you see in vanilla Doom2 for example, so naturally we add more and more monsters and challenge to our maps over time til you end up with slaughtermaps.

That in itself is totally fine, but personally, I prefer things that take it in the opposite direction, the "less is more" approach. As much as I love the thrill of defeating waves and waves of enemies, I like even more putting the player in a "how far can 8 shotgun shells and 2 stimpacks get you" kind of situation, where suddenly a lone cacodemon is a genuine challenge. Ammo and health conservation style maps = Totally my bag. It makes a small group of enemies seem very threatening when your arsenal and resources are really limited. The common thread this shares with slaughtermaps is using what you're given very wisely. Limited resources injects this survival-horror element into the gameplay, creating a tension very reminiscent of the days where I thought Shareware Doom was hard as hell at UV.

All that said, I've done sort of an opposite trend to everyone else - I used to be obsessed with making "challenge" maps - Stuff the likes of tdevil2.wad, but these days I prefer to make some casual-but-still-engaging stuff, the likes of sinseven.wad, which definitely turns down the heat quite a lot compared to tdevil2.

The only time I can be fucked to truly concentrate while Doomin' these days is in deathmatch :)

joepallai said:

Puzzles and traps seem easier now than they did in the early days--probably experience and a more studious approach to level design in recent wads (ie, less random shit)

There's just something about that "Indiana Jones searching for hidden passageways" element of mid-90's PWADs that I love to death. I rarely add such things into my publicly released maps though as it doesn't score the high marks. People consider having to think about something for more than 20 seconds to be criminal in modern gaming, and even Doom modding.. (This is a rant I've had before so excuse me for being a broken record)


Demon of the Well said:

in older generations you might be more likely to see challenge delivered via [...] miserly supply rationing (which has persistently been a niche form of difficulty through the ages, in fairness)

[...]

'difficulty' can mean more than 'having to dodge hundreds of projectiles from different directions simultaneously.'

This perfectly sums up my personal approach when trying to make a truly challenging map. With that said, I'm stoked that there are others like ToD out there who has provided me with interesting map structures and challenges I wouldn't have even known existed if not for his creations.

It's best to embrace the fact that we all enjoy Doom differently rather doing the stupid finger-pointing crap.

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Chezza said:

This may be controversial but I do think the increase of slaughter maps over the years is both lazyness and a desperate attempt to rekindle their spark in Doom via intense difficulty.

No, it is to provide a worthy challenge to the highly skilled players (or just persistent ones, or even anyone) who enjoy such a challenge and kind of gameplay. It's not fair from you to assume that slaughtermaps can be objectively measured as something inferior to what you call "Doom". Not only people make and play what they like, but experienced slaughterplayers actually have clear understandings of what makes good and bad slaughtermaps, because the genre is describable as any other one.

I liked how Demonologist once put it:

Demonologist said:

While it's understandable that there's a very thin line between batshit insane but clever stuff and unbalanced turd in the eyes of general public - we, esoteric masochistic deathcult, see the difference and appreciate tough challenge, and I'm going to defend Danne as a master of hardcore gameplay because he is. Yes, he goes overboard with hordes at times, but them's the breaks.

So, nobody forces you to care about slaughtermaps at all if you don't like them, and you still don't have to derate them.

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I have the impression that wads are more difficult than in the past, and that this increase in difficult is due to the fact that authors, in order to have a demanding gameplay, usually put thousands of monsters in a single map; on the contrary I think that a good gameplay can be created using few monsters (even weak monsters) accurately arranged. But too often it is simpler to add monsters than to place carefully the few monsters already present.

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Angry Saint said:

I think that a good gameplay can be created using few monsters (even weak monsters) accurately arranged.


Quoted for truth: try Urban Wars Beta and see for yourself how a bunch of cleverly arranged zombies can quickly fuck you up in what appears to be a "simple" house level. And no chaingunners in there, either (well, unless you count the spider mastermind in the backyard) ;-)

Pretty original level for 1994, too. Too bad that a full episode (!) modelled after it never came to be...

The "cheap" way of increasing difficulty by simply throwing more monsters at the player is really an artifact of more computing power and more advanced source ports being available, otherwise it could never work (but check out DMINATOR.WAD from 1994...)

There was another thread about WAD difficulty recently which however went South & Sour pretty quickly, as everybody was calling each other "noob", "scrub", "why can't we just get along lol" etc ;-)

It is a fact however that just throwing in more baddies doesn't automatically make a level harder: the Law Of Diminishing Returns applies after a certain point, simply because the baddies end up impeding each other's movement and infighting, turning the map into a maneuvering contest (or simply a matter of finding a barricaded safe spot, and waiting for things to calm down). Case in point: the infamous NUTS.WAD. It certainly was the map with the most monsters, when it came out, at least for a while. But was it also the hardest? (Hint: it can be UV-speeded in less than 30 seconds).

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Angry Saint said:

With 100% kill?


Then that would be UV-Max ;-)

BTW, nobody has achieved 100% kills in NUTS.WAD without cheating:

http://doomedsda.us/wad706.html

None of the UV-Speed records in under 30 seconds either (my mistake) but pretty close anyway. I think it's possible to go faster only with non-infinite height actors: then you can just let the archviles "propel" you to the switch or run on the heads of the cyberdemons.

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Demon of the Well said:

Chezza: This little corner of The Internet is, shall we say, 'replete' with concrete evidence that TimeOfDeath (and many others) does indeed have a genuine passion for slaughtermaps (and other challenge-oriented levels), in spite of your persistent intimations here and elsewhere that those not sharing your specific viewpoint are lying both to themselves and to everyone else. One need only take a quick look around to find it, but of course I'm sure you will feel no need to do so, secure in your unassailable fortress of Reason as you are.



Ah, I didn't know he was a hardcore slaughter-map player who legitimately loves it. Well, I can eat my words there. BUT you seem to believe I'm claiming everyone else is wrong for enjoying slaughter maps however I'm quite clearly expressing my personal subjective views and rationale on why I dislike such maps which is still justified. They are energy draining, niche suited difficulty maps that are filled with dick-moves (Plenty of essays, guides and relevant discussions suggesting hordes of difficult monsters ambushing the player is not ideal, although I do need to appreciate what Slaughter maps are catered to) but since there are hardcore Doomers out there it's totally fine and should not be criticized. I disagree with that.

My fortress even has a moat.

Da Werecat said:

"If you like something I don't like, you must be a masochist" is hardly a mature position.


I wonder if Chezza will now join those who scream about Doomworld being a citadel of rude unpleasant nerd elitists, even though he started this exchange.



I like the community too much and want to be apart of it. I haven't seen any overwhelmingly rude posts as of yet. Although to be fair, TimeOfDeath claimed I'm a lazy player who doesn't practice enough at first before I judged his comment. I don't think he knows how much Slaughter maps I have completed, even if he played more than I it doesn't mean I got sick of slaughter maps from just playing one of them.

A disagreement won't have me up and arms. But anyone who likes what I dislike is bit of a masochist.

Angry Saint said:

on the contrary I think that a good gameplay can be created using few monsters (even weak monsters) accurately arranged. But too often it is simpler to add monsters than to place carefully the few monsters already present.


^ This

There is a real and under-appreciated skill behind making all encounters, even the ones with trash mobs and starting weaponry (although the vanilla pistol can't be saved, no sir) both balanced in difficulty and fun. But it's disappointing to see so many well made Megawads throw that out the window and only appeal to UV players. Perhaps I ought to start asking around for people's suggestions on large wads that better suit my preferences.

scifista42 said:

No, it is to provide a worthy challenge to the highly skilled players (or just persistent ones, or even anyone) who enjoy such a challenge and kind of gameplay. It's not fair from you to assume that slaughtermaps can be objectively measured as something inferior to what you call "Doom". Not only people make and play what they like, but experienced slaughterplayers actually have clear understandings of what makes good and bad slaughtermaps, because the genre is describable as any other one.

I liked how Demonologist once put it:
So, nobody forces you to care about slaughtermaps at all if you don't like them, and you still don't have to derate them.


You do... raise a good point. Perhaps instead of being very loud about my dislike for Slaughter-maps I ought to put into consideration who they really are for. I never considered them as inferior and as I said previously I respect the effort behind them although I still do believe lots of great potential to create unique scenarios gets thrown out the window in favor for UV difficulty. And I'm having a whinge on how majority of the best content produced don't cater to my desires.

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