How would you reorder Episode 4?

I've been thinking about how backwards the order of Thy Flesh Consumed, and was curious as to what the best map order might be if it was shuffled so as to lean more towards the difficulty going upwards rather than getting easier. I thought of making a mod that rearranges them but I wanted to see what people thought would be the best order first. I think the only one that'd definitely stay in the same slot would be E4M8 but that's only because of the Spider Mastermind boss. Perhaps the first level could be E4M4, followed by E4M7, then maybe E4M9. The secret level could be one of the most difficult like E4M1.

As I was mentally putting the maps into a different order, I had a thought that possibly the order of levels were determined by expected play time rather than difficulty. I still can't explain E4M4 by either this or any other sane rationale for that matter ;)

Edit because I forgot my list: E4M4, E4M1, E4M5, E4M3, E4M2, E4M9, E4M6, E4M8 (Boss), E4M7 (secret).

I would agree with you in having E4M4 first and leaving E4M8 as the boss. E4M6 would be in 7th slot, befitting the type of map I feel should be a penultimate one. E4M1 could be second, as you'd have a bit of weaponry on continuous to negate the difficulty somewhat. E4M5 and E4M3 are pretty interchangeable on my list. I like Fear and like E4M7 even less than E4M4, so the E4M9 goes into the main slots and E4M7 is out, good riddance. E4M2 can be great in any position really.

I like your idea of having E4M6 being the penultimate in terms of theme. I think E4M2 should be a few maps away from it, just because both of them have Cyberdemons and I think they should be spaced apart for that reason.

Good point, I'll swap it with the map before it on my list.

I wouldn't reorder it at all. E4M1 is an excellent first level for shock value, compared to previous episodes (which according to id, are a walk in the park in comparison). I'd just change E4M4 and E4M5 to something more intimidating, and increase the hostility/reward ratio in E4M7 and E4M8. The last two are excellently creepily designed, just not that difficult.

I wouldn't. The majority of E4 just plain needed to be harder.

It would be awesome if there was a community project to give Doom 2 its own equivalent of Ultimate Doom's fourth episode.

Avoozl said:

It would be awesome if there was a community project to give Doom 2 its own equivalent of Ultimate Doom's fourth episode.

Wasn't it joe-ilya's Consumed Earth??

Marcaek said:

I wouldn't. The majority of E4 just plain needed to be harder.

I suppose Episode 4 being more consistently harder would have been better.
E4 for me is basically 'hard ammo start with E4M1, fuck E4M2, breeze all the way up to fuck E4M6, easy easy boss map and then an optional somewhat difficult E4M9'.

Something along the lines of cannonball's DraftEX would have made for a better E4.

Avoozl said:

It would be awesome if there was a community project to give Doom 2 its own equivalent of Ultimate Doom's fourth episode.

There was. It was joe-ilya's Consumed Earth. Though it wasn't really that good.

Avoozl said:

It would be awesome if there was a community project to give Doom 2 its own equivalent of Ultimate Doom's fourth episode.

Officially, wouldn't that be No Rest For the Living?

chungy said:

Officially, wouldn't that be No Rest For the Living?

Well yes but I would rather see a community take on it.

nxGangrel said:

There was. It was joe-ilya's Consumed Earth. Though it wasn't really that good.

Well that's a shame then.

E4M2, E4M2, E4M2, E4M2, E4M2, E4M2, E4M2, E4M2 (Boss), E4M2 (secret).

Avoozl said:

It would be awesome if there was a community project to give Doom 2 its own equivalent of Ultimate Doom's fourth episode.

How do you define a "Thy Flesh Consumed" style of level? Lots of fan-made wads exist with the orange sky, castle-like, cramped organic architecture and dungeon textures.

While I see now major problem with the order these days (because hey, I'm fucking used to it), E4M4 certainly has 'opening map' written all over it. What the fuck it's doing in the middle of the episode is a question that we'll never know the answer to (unless we actually bother asking it to those working on the episode at the time).

Anyway, taking some sort of 'sensible' difficulty ramp into account for the KB-only players of 1995:
E4M4, E4M1, E4M5, E4M2, (E4M9,) E4M3, E4M6, E4M7, E4M8.

No matter what way you look at it though, the rest of the episode is a trivial deal compared to E4M2.

The thing about E4M9 is that it's the only techbase of the episode, which is why it's the secret map. I wouldn't blame anyone for not picking up on this though, because after what Id did with E2M9 and E3M9, I was expecting something a little more unique...

On the other hand, I must say I don't understand this tendency a lot of modern players have to ignore secret exits and boot up the bonus map right after the last one instead of playing it where it's supposed to be.

Although in a way the idea of secret map is kind of silly. If it's in the game, most people will want to play it, so if they can't find it they'll just look up the answer. Which is probably the reason why Hell 2 Pay uses the secret slots for regular maps, and I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often.

Anyway, I wouldn't reorder the episode, but maybe E4M4, E4M5 and E4M7 should have been replaced with more interesting stuff.

Hey I made a thread like this one almost exactly one year ago. And nobody gave a shit. Lol.

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/71375-name-a-better-map-order-for-ultimate-doom-episode-4/

I would either reorder the episode like I said in RUSH's year old thread, or, inspired by other poster's ideas like this:

Budoka said:

I wouldn't reorder the episode, but maybe E4M4, E4M5 and E4M7 should have been replaced with more interesting stuff.

I would replace all of the maps with better balanced and more interesting ones.

E4M1 seems like a prelude to a boss map or the first half of a boss map.

If we go by difficulty and forget that Unto the Cruel is a boss level, then probably:

E4M4
E4M5
E4M8
E4M3
E4M7
E4M1
E4M6
E4M2

I really admire E4M2 as a good, hard level, basically the definition of pressure in early-ish Doom mapping. I wish I could just lose E4M1 forever though. Always thought E4M5, E4M6 and E4M7 were gorgeous and the remaining maps were totally forgettable, although the location of the berserk pack in E4M3 always makes me laugh.

I'd re-order it like this:

1. E4M5
2. new map
3. E4M7
4. new map
5. new map
6. E4M2
7. E4M6
8. new boss map
9. Sheer Poison :P

I'd definitely keep E4M1 as the first map.
It's a difficult map with only a couple health bonuses on the harder settings and in general low ammo. Going into the level with items from a previous level would break it and make it too easy because its so small.

Marcaek said:

I wouldn't. The majority of E4 just plain needed to be harder.

This. The way E4M1 took utilized every bit of its space to create challenging enemy encounters was brilliant, and I was disappointed to see that E4M2 and E4M6 were the only other maps that took that same route.

I'd also replace E4M4 and E4M5 entirely and give E4M9 a significant overhaul.

I like how varied everyone's opinion on how it should be reordered (or not) is. When I get home later I'll study all the different ideas and see what I think might work best and test it out. I actually kind of agree with the sentiment that perhaps the majority of maps should be replaced to make a more balanced episode, but I want to limit myself to just using the stock maps.

I'm in the "it just needed to be harder" camp as well. I never had a chance at beating E4 as a kid, but when I tried again some years later, I struggled through e4m1 and e4m2, then the rest was really easy by comparison. I was disappointed, only by the difficulty curve, the actual mapping/theme seems fine to me.

E4M8 is a total letdown too, in my opinion at least.. I'll take the actually engaging and interesting IOS battle that everyone's always crying and whining about over "brown square with spider that can't even fucking defend itself" any day.

Yeah, I didn't particularly care for the final battle either. It would have been much more interesting if they had made up a whole new monster, but putting that much effort into free expansion probably wasn't good business.

Doomkid said:

E4M8 is a total letdown too, in my opinion at least.. I'll take the actually engaging and interesting IOS battle that everyone's always crying and whining about over "brown square with spider that can't even fucking defend itself" any day.

I thought the IoS was cool, if also kind of clunky and gimmicky. But E2M8 and E3M8 are still the best boss battles ever. The actual level E4M8 was awesome up until the ending "boss" which just sucked giant monkey balls. What were they thinking? This big epic buildup leads to a Spider Demon stuck behind a brown wall? And it can barely move? WTF? By that point you had the BFG and all that other good stuff so a couple seconds BAM BAM okay then game over. Wow. That's like the worst ending ever! It doesn't get a free pass because it's Doom. That just plain sucks in any game. They had the potential to top the awesomeness of E3M8 and they totally blew it. Not sure what id was thinking there. Although to be fair E3M8 kind of lacked in that regard as well. I always thought the Spider Demon should have had higher HP. At least the boss variants anyway.

Put me down for "It was hard enough." I'd probably swap E4M2 and E4M4, though, leaving everything else as-is.

dethtoll said:

Put me down for "It was hard enough." I'd probably swap E4M2 and E4M4, though, leaving everything else as-is.

This and add more ammo and health for E4M1. Goddamn it Mcgee!

Death Egg said:

I like how varied everyone's opinion on how it should be reordered (or not) is. When I get home later I'll study all the different ideas and see what I think might work best and test it out. I actually kind of agree with the sentiment that perhaps the majority of maps should be replaced to make a more balanced episode, but I want to limit myself to just using the stock maps.

Why bother? It would only work with MAPINFO compatible ports unless you plan on distributing IWAD maps in unaltered form which guarantees it'll be refused from the archives and probably elsewhere.

Don't most people just IDCLEV through the maps after playing anyway? IS anyone going to decide to go looking for a WAD like this before they bother loading up E4 for the first time?